Designing the X300
When I arrived at Jaguar in 1978, I was already fairly familiar with the exterior design story of XJ40 since it had been around for quite a while. There was some pressure from the company’s management for it to be more contemporary, which in those days meant harder edges and squarer lines. Plus, the then president of Jaguar North America, Mike Dale, also demanded rectangular headlamps.
With its design process starting in the early Seventies, two decades later the car was starting to look quite old-fashioned. The surfaces were fairly simple and flattish for a Jaguar plus, those lights meant it didn’t have the recognisable XJ face.
The company had been working on a more traditional-looking replacement, internally known as the XJ90, but this was scrapped when Ford took over in 1989. And so, in the early Nineties it was decided to give the XJ40 a much needed facelift.
Started by one of my colleagues, it was originally going to be just a front-end change. But then Ford found the budget to do the back as well so it became a full update. Jaguar’s design director and my boss, Geoff Lawson, asked me to do one side of the car and my colleague the other. Since mine was preferred I ended up taking over as manager of the project that soon became known as the X300.
At the time all cars were looking more and more alike so it was important for Jaguars to stand out. I never liked the XJ40’s lack of form and sculpture making it seem very unJaguar-like so turned to the still popular XJ6 Series 3 as inspiration.
One of the things that I was really keen to do was to give the new car the famous Jaguar face, that included five recognisable elements including twin round headlamps either side of a grille.
When the XJ40 was still at the full-sized clay model stage, I thought the tail looked like it was falling off so I had it raised a little which I thought looked much better. But because of timings this was kicked into touch. So, with the X300 I had the chance to raise the trailing edge of the boot a little, which made the car look much more balanced.
SINCE THE CAR SOLD QUITE WELL – OVER 92,000 IN FOUR YEARS – THE X300 TURNED OUT TO BE QUITE AN IMPORTANT CAR
I also really wanted to change the greenhouse (or windows). The front screen was okay, but the rear – the so-called D p
