Jaguar’s upgrade of its XJ line-up for the 1980s brought remarkable results, with an uplift in sales and a new focus on quality. We take a look at the impressive achievements of the Series III saloons
CAST YOUR mind back to March 1979 and the launch of a Series III version of the evergreen XJ, an important event for Jaguar. Thanks to a wide range of useful updates and more than a hint of modernisation, the XJ was suddenly all set for the ’80s, giving Jaguar’s long-running saloon a competitive edge against increasingly popular imported rivals. It wasn’t the allnew Jaguar that had been mooted for a number of years, but the Series III was still a major boost for the beleaguered marque.
It went on to be a big hit, of course, staying in production even after the launch of the all-new XJ40 generation of October 1986. Indeed, the final sixcylinder Series III wasn’t built until April ’87, while the XJ12 version famously enjoyed an extended career, remaining available right through to late 1992.
The ’70s hadn’t been the happiest of decades for Jaguar. From achieving record sales (up until then) of 32,589 cars in 1971, the annual figure had slumped to 20,205 by 1975. It would increase slightly (to 23,688) by 1977, but would then plunge to just 14,861 by 1979 – the lowest Jaguar production figure since 1957. The company was running at only 40 per cent capacity, losing vast sums of money and struggling to sell the cars that it did make – a situation that played havoc with Jaguar’s attempts to afford new-model development.
As is the norm in the motor industry, work on an XJ replacement had begun almost as soon as the original was launched in 1968, with the expectation that it would debut once the XJ6 reached its tenth birthday, having received a facelift halfway through its life. The Series II XJ arrived on schedule in 1973, by which time its proposed replacement – project XJ40 – existed as a full-size mock-up. From there, however, progress stalled. By 1979, when the car was supposed to have been launched, it had been in development for a decade – and as we now know, it was still seven years away from going on sale.
SUCCESSFUL FACELIFT
Updating a luxury saloon that had already seen a decade of production was a potentially difficult task, with Jaguar having to combine the requirements of its traditional customer base with the need for a more modern offering. The end result was a comprehensive facelift of Jaguar’s long-running XJ, a remarkable achievement considering the project had been allocated just £7 million – a sum considered tiny in motor industry terms, even 44 years ago. There were, of course, no changes to the XJ’s floorpan or engineering, with the Series III’s updates being mostly aesthetic and therefore less costly to implement. Interestingly, however, Jaguar chose to enlist the help of an outside specia
