TWIN TEST
The XK8 which replaced the XJS in 1996 was a very different beast indeed.We compare a 4-litre example of each to discover which we prefer today
ALTHOUGH ONE directly followed the other, the XJS and XK8 have as much in common as a popular dairy product does with a soft, white and porous rock. While one has hard, angular lines and powered by a range of relatively ancient engines, the other features rounder, more voluptuous curves plus a much more modern unit. They’re so unalike it’s like they came from totally different eras and not years.
But thanks to the XJS lasting a massive 21 years meaning its development started in the late Sixties, that’s because they did. Although the car had been updated and facelifted several times in that time there was no hiding its age and even at the end of production in 1996 it was still a car from the Seventies. The XK8, meanwhile, was mostly new. Despite its design harking back to the past, the car looked forward to the future and in terms of performance, engineering and tech it was very much aimed at the coming millennium and beyond.
The result was two very different cars which other than their badges, had little in common.
Over the two decades since the XK8 replaced the XJS which do we think is the best choice?
If things had worked out like Jaguar had initially planned, then we wouldn’t be doing this test. The XJ-S was meant to be replaced by a new, more curvaceous sports car in the late Eighties that was designed by designer and JW columnist, Keith Helfet and codenamed the XJ41.
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Helfet spent ten years on the car but despite several running prototypes being built, with an overly complicated specification resulting in increased costs, Ford pulled the plug on the project when the American giant took over Jaguar in 1989.
“I was distraught, I was absolutely gutted,” Keith told me during an interview in the October 2018 issue about the car. “It had all gone so sour and I was really upset about it”
Yet the design didn’t go to waste; after Keith later realised the body would fit directly onto the XJ-S chassis, the car was reborn as a low volume model produced by JaguarSport at the same Bloxham-based facility as the XJ220 (another Keith Helfet design) had been.
But Tom Walkinshaw – who jointly owned the satellite operation 50/50 with Jaguar – quietly suggested to Ford that if the car was rebranded as another of its recent acquisitions, Aston Martin, then it could be sold at a much higher cost. Ford naturally agreed and the DB7 was born, finally reaching production in 1993.
This didn’t solve Jaguar’s problem of how to replace the XJ-S which by the early Nineties was extremely old fashioned. As Jaguar’s director of engineering, Jim Randle, admitted after the facelift was revealed, “It was withering on t
