THUNDERING TIGER

For Britain in 1961 there was no more influential place than America. We wanted their music, liberal lifestyle, clothes and cars. Even Jaguar – conservative despite its image as the spiv’s Bentley – was briefly captivated, and in that year unveiled the MkX. Coventry’s new flagship owed more in its proportions to Cadillac than to previous Jaguars, and was loved neither in its US target market nor in Mini-Minor Britain.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. After all, the smaller Jaguars had been selling well in America, as had its sports cars. While its biggest saloon the MkIX still resembled the MkVII of a decade earlier, that car had caused a sensation in the States too. It seemed that a new big Jaguar would sell equally well, especially if it followed the same stylistic trend as its smaller siblings. Four headlamps were incorporated as a sop to American mores, while the whole thing looked more like an airbrushed brochure image than a real car with its exaggerated proportions.

Development work had begun in 1958, when Jaguar’s range encompassed the small MkI saloon, the large MkIX, and the XK150. The new car, codenamed Zenith, was to replace the MkIX and to take advantage