Working with JaguarSport
THE XJ220 was a unique vehicle for many reasons but especially its development. It’s well-known that the original 1988 concept car was done without a budget or any resources by volunteers within Jaguar and its supply companies. What’s less known is the uniqueness of the team that put it into production at JaguarSport’s newly acquired premises on a business estate outside Bloxham, a small village 30 miles to the north of Oxford.
The project manager was a guy called Mike Moreton who had come from Ford where his best-known project was perhaps the Group B rally car, the RS200, meaning he had experience in competition.
The small team of engineers he’d assembled was split 50/50 between those who had come from the car industry and those from motorsport. Those are two really different cultures but by the end of the project, all of us involved with the car believed what came out of it was more than sum of the parts. This is because unique solutions were often found because of the different experiences within the team.
I was the only member directly employed by Jaguar and seconded to JaguarSport. For two years I would commute to Abbey Panels, where we did the modelling, and Bloxham most days, clocking up a big mileage. Compared to Jaguar’s main facilities, with no other models made there, the relatively small building felt more like a cottage industry.
The most interesting and exciting part of working in that team was the decision-making process which was taken directly from the motorsport industry. Since racing has to react to things quickly, engineering is done at a pace and it was the same for the 220.
Problems were solved there and then and not deferred to a board or committee which is not how car companies (including Jaguar) usually operate. The fact the engineering for what was effectively a new car was finished in two years was a direct result of this.
UNIQUE SOLUTIONS WERE OFTEN FOUND BECAUSE OF THE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES WITHIN THE TEAM
Although Jaguar’s design director, Geoff Lawson, would occasionally pop over to Bloxham, my direct chain of command was JaguarSport which finished at Tom Walkinshaw. Despite owning the company 50/50 with Jaguar, it was Tom who was in charge.
