Shed Of The Week: Jaguar XJ8 - Pistonheads.com
This is the Jaguar XJ8. Oh sorry, wrong thread. But while we're on the subject of planks, a key one in the Jaguar proposition has always been to do with bringing sporting luxury within reach of the common(ish) man. The first XJ6 certainly did that in 1968. The current XJ is a considerably larger beast, but even that manages to retain an unlikely-looking sporting edge. Almost smack in the middle of the 46-year spread of post-'68 Jaguar saloons we find this 1998 X308, a car that one year earlier had put the tin lid on the reign of the straight-six Jaguar. A Jaguar engine had changed, from the glorious beating heart of the car to something you didn't mind seeing every now and then, but didn't especially want to hear. You could understand it. Jaguar was still gamely delivering on the marque's double whammy of sportiness and luxury, and all credit to them for that, but in reality owners rarely extended the XJ's performance/handling package. The market had spoken, and it had said that this was a luxury car, not a sporting one. On that one criterion alone it was hard to fault it. It was even harder to get out of an XJ in a bad mood, unless you'd just broken down of course, which as we all know is something that big Jags do all the time. XJ8s will do big. Source: www.pistonheads.com
