75 YEARS OF THE JAGUAR XK120

Many people are familiar with the history of the XK120 – that Browns Lane intended it as a ‘test-bed’ for the latest Jaguar engine and how its appearance at Earls Court was because of the Mk. VII saloon would not be ready until 1950 due to body-tooling problems.

But the impact of the XK120 at the first post-war London Motor Show 75 years ago cannot be underestimated. Just imagine seeing that coachwork, gazing under the bonnet at the all-new 3,442cc DOHC engine and hearing the sales team utter the phrase “ the world’s fastest standard production car”.

As Motor Sport noted:

The Earls Court Exhibition was a success in every way, and 562,954 people attended - a record. As so much has been written about it, we will content ourselves with a review from the enthusiast’s angle. Without a doubt, the entirely new 3-litre XK120 Jaguar sports two-seater stole the Show.

Thoughts of the meat ration and queuing in the rain instantly vanished in the presence of such a machine. Autocar further whetted motorists’ appetite with a description of an engine that was “a beautiful piece of work; it has all that experience deems necessary to deliver the kind of high performance which can be tuned higher if required in the future”. Browns Lane originally planned to build a limited run of 200 cars; the response from the public and press dedicated otherwise.

Jaguar used a modified chassis from the Mk. V saloon for the XK120. Between September 1948 and April 1950, two hundred forty-two cars featured aluminium coachwork on a wooden frame to avoid tooling costs. Later models had a steel body aside from the boot lid, bonnet and doors. One advertisement referred to “The New XK100 and XK120 Super Sports”, the former with a 1,970cc DHOC four-cylinder engine, but it never entered production.

When The Motor evaluated the XK120 on a “Continental Road Test”, its price was £1,263 3s 11d - steep but not out of reach to the ambitious barrister or architecture. The report stated, “The Jaguar technical team have very evidently evolved a winner, a car which is superb even by this early stage in what should be a very long and honourable career”.

Browns Lane intended over 80% of XK production to be in LHD form and made its US debut in 1949 at the New York Motor Show. Clark Gable owned the first production roadster, and in May of that year, Ron Sutton drove an XK at over 130 mph along Belgium’s Jabbeke highway. Not even complaints from Tom McCahill of Mechanix Illustrated – “It would have been better if they had just shovelled the unassembled parts into an old bag and shipped them here” could quell the success of the XK120.

Production ended in 1951 with the introduction of the XK140, by which time the XK120 had defined the Jaguar name for motorists worldwide. And here is a reminder why -