Jaguar World Magazine No.143 XK8 - What Makes it Great? Back Issue

I’ve already recounted the fi rst time I drove an X100 XK8 on this page
before – see JWM, September 2012 – but when I was driving the 4.2S
for my feature on the car I suddenly remembered the second time. It
was 1998, I’d yet to become a journalist but was often asked to help on
photoshoots. For some reason – I can’t remember why – I had to drive the XK8 4.0 coupe that was the long term test car of an editor who worked on a well known car magazine. A metallic red coupe, it looked fabulous and I wasn’t the only one to think so either. Still reasonably new at the time, the XK8 created plenty of attention when I joined the M25 late one evening. Fast forward to 2014 and an X100 still has the same effect. In the 36 hours I borrowed the beautiful grey example it created as much interest as if I’d borrowed a £100k super car. Yet thanks to the inherent beauty of all Jaguar sports cars I’m sure anyone who drove an XK 120 or an E-type a decade after their production ended and
before they were considered to be classics probably experienced the same thing. Jaguars don’t date as quickly as other varieties of car – a Porsche 911 from 1964 for example will look old fashioned by today’s standard whereas an E-type remains ageless. This looks set to continue with the F-TYPE Coupe. A staggeringly beautiful car, like all great Jaguars before it, the new coupe’s design is modern and looks forward rather than back. And yet if you look closely there are one or two faint echoes of previous designs giving it the same timeless quality as the XK8. As a result I think this is the best looking car Jaguar has produced in a long time. And just as the XK8 still looks great 16 years after I first drove one, so will the F-TYPE Coupe in 2030. Pity the same won't be said about me.