Jaguar World Magazine XJ6 Series 2 October 2008 Back Issue

As I write this almost a month has passed
since the XK60 weekend, and the
intervening four weeks must have been
very busy for Osteopaths across the
country – such was the degree of neck straining
undertaken by all those that visited Goodwood
and Cowdray Park in an effort not to miss
anything that was going on.
As well as the classic XKs themselves the
other star of the celebrations was the XK engine,
numerous highly-polished examples of which were
also responsible for neck injury as whenever a
bonnet was raised there was never a shortage of
eager onlookers keen to take a closer look. In fact,
on each of my regular trips between the XK village
and Goodwood’s inner paddock I passed an E-type
that was parked for the duration of the two days
outside the Super Shell building with its bonnet
raised. Not once did I wander by without seeing at
least one or two visitors admiring its 4.2-litre engine.
Of course, from the outset the XK engine’s visual
appeal was every bit as intentional as its mechanical
superiority – a fact underlined by William Heynes,
Jaguar’s chief engineer who oversaw its design, in
a paper he wrote for the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers (see, Red Raider, page 35). In short, the
XK engine not only had to be powerful, it had to
look it too. The aim was that customers would have
just as much pride in the engine that powered their
Jaguar as they would in the way the car looked.
It was an approach that worked, and how…so
successful was the XK engine that it remained in
production until 1993.
While today’s ever tightening emissions laws
mean it’s impossible to see how the basic design of
a new engine could ever have such longevity again,
it’s also sad to note that Jaguar’s current engines
are not much to look at either.