TECH
The life and times of Jaguar’s first V8 engine
It’s generally accepted that the well-regarded AJ-V8 unveiled in the XK8 in 1996 marked the beginning of a new era for Jaguar. Not only was it a state-of-the-art powerplant, but it also offered the crucial V8 format needed to face up to German rivals BMW and Mercedes, especially in the USA where the V8 had long been a mainstay.
It wasn’t, however, Jaguar’s first V8 – or to put it more correctly, the first to be marketed as a Jaguar powerplant, that honour going to an engine design which was acquired as something of an orphan in the takeover of Daimler.
In typical William Lyons fashion, even senior executives at Jaguar were largely unaware of Lyons’ intention to acquire the struggling Daimler concern, even Chief Engineer Bill Heynes apparently hearing the announcement on the morning radio news.
Lyons agreed a fee of £3,110,000 for Daimler, but the prize wasn’t the firm’s low-volume car-making business, rather the 92,903sqm factory in the Radford area of Coventry. In fact, the vehicle making business made for rather dismal assessment: Jaguar engineers discovered that the V8-engined SP250 sports car suffered from such chassis flex that pushing down on the rear wing of the fibreglass body made the door shuts open up 8mm, while the car’s looks were challenging to say the least. To cap it all, it was discovered that the Daimler name hadn’t even been registered in the important US market and the newly introduced Majestic Major was selling so slowly that it was being made at the rate of ten cars a week.
Even Daimler’s once proud bus division wasn’t doing well, having declined to the point where it was making losses, but there were two glimmers of hope: the Ferret armoured car manufactured under contract for the MoD was profitable and the V8 powering the SP250 and the Majestic was a gem.
The engine is generally regarded as being the work of Daimler’s boss at the time of the sale, although it’s been suggested that much of the detail design was the work of his colleague Jack Wickes.
Turner may have been at the tiller when Daimler was run into the ground, but much of the financial mishap can be laid at the feet of the extravagant tastes of former chairman Bernard Docker and wife Norah, who between them effectively bankrupted the company during his time in charge. In any case, Turner had an impeccable CV when it came to the world of motorcycle engineering, having designed the Ariel Square Four and later becoming chief designer and general manager of Triumph motorcycles, before becoming head of parent company BSA’s automotive division.
This included Daimler and one of his first tasks was to design a V8 engine for a proposed new saloon car. Unsurprisingly,
