CLASSIC DRIVE
The Cabriolet was intended as a stop-gap model but together with the six-cylinder option was responsible for rescuing the XJ-S.
THE RETURN of the two-seater convertible” was how Autocar excitedly introduced the XJ-S Cabriolet back in October 1983 and it’s this headline more than any of the advertising from the period which reinforces just what a big event the model was for Jaguar. Indeed it was the first open car since the demise of the E-Type and despite the many surviving examples sporting rear seats, the Cabriolet was officially sold only as a two-seater.
Ironically, major news though it was for Jaguar’s marketing strategy and its dealers – especially in the crucial North American market – the Cabriolet was intended only as a temporary stop-gap addition to the range, which explains its design and production.
The accepted version of events is that Jaguar’s US-market dealers were clamouring for an open car, yet the automotive industry in general had been fearful of potential legislation outlawing convertibles in the US market – one famous product of this thinking being the Triumph Stag with its Targa-style rollover hoop.
It was this thinking back in the 1970s which had been instrumental in the XJ-S being engineered only as a steel-topped coupe and clearly the engineering to create a full convertible was an immense task. The solution was to test the market with a less ambitious product, which went by the name Cabriolet. Amusingly, Sir John Egan relates in his autobiography, “It was a little unusual, which was why we called it a cabriolet, although we weren’t quite sure what that meant.”
Legend has it that the Cabriolet was developed by a ‘Saturday club’ encouraged by then engineering chief Jim Randle and working out of hours to develop a lowbudget solution both to the problem of bodyshell rigidity in an open XJ-S and also to work out how such a model could be integrated into existing production facilities.
The first question was easily answered: by keeping the side window structure with the body side framing, the bodyshell’s rigidity was little changed from the coupe and needed only a Stag-style T-bar rollover hoop and a cross-bracing arrangement underneath the car. Crucially, neither of these required engineering changes to the body-in-white, meaning the Cabriolet could be manufactured as a conversion of a standard shell.
This in turn solved the second problem – that of how to integrate production of the open car into the existing manufacturing systems. That doesn’t mean the process was simple though and in fact it was a convoluted business. Each Cabriolet began as a standard XJ-S bodyshell taken from the Browns Lane track although without the roof skin panel.
