Background
Whilst Egan and Lawson sounded for all the world like a firm of country solicitors, the duo were in fact instrumental in shoring up the future of Jaguar cars. One of Britain’s most iconic and evocative brands came perilously close to slipping into obscurity in the late 1970’s and early 80’s on the back of unprecedented turmoil and strife. Luckily John Egan and Geoff Lawson were at hand.
Egan arrived at Jaguar in 1980, at the behest of BL chief Sir Michael Edwardes. Egan’s first day at the helm of Jaguar was, perhaps, emblematic of the firm’s wider malaise. His car had to pick its way past the burning braziers of a full-blown and angry picket line. At this time Jaguar were losing around £50M a year and enduring three times as many first year warranty claims as rivals Mercedes-Benz. Perhaps more tellingly, Mercedes workers were producing 6 cars per head as compared to Jaguar’s paltry 1.25.
With Egan at the tiller and Michael Edwardes working his political connections to breaking point, Jaguar secured £100M of investment from the Conservative Government. With some mullah in the coffers and Egan’s raft, or more accurately “flotilla,” of changes starting to gain traction, the time was right for some new creativity to be added to the mix. Egan manged to poach GM’s head of design, Geoff Lawson and with his arrival in 1984 effectively put Jaguar’s revival and renaissance in the safest of hands.
Lawson opened his account at Jaguar by designing the tremendous XJ220, a feat akin to arriving at De Havilland in the 1950’s and designing Concord. The new XJs (X308) would be next before Lawson’s attentions fell on the long awaited, and overdue, XJS replacement. By now Ford had won the game of corporate pass-the-Jaguar-parcel and more axes were brutally being swung than during the reign of Henry VIII. Ford still recognised the urgent need to replace the aging XJS, but one of their first axes fell upon the meandering Jaguar XJ41/42, XJS replacement project. So, Lawson and his design team started afresh in late 1991 and the pressure was on. Bucket loads of ingenuity and a heavy reliance on components from the XJS, meant the XK8 was announced in March 1996, a huge achievement for an all-new sporting flagship.
The XK8 was well received from the start. The family resemblance to the E Type was almost universally welcomed and the inclusion of the all new 4L, 32 valve AJ-V8 engine represented a statement of intent by Jaguar. That intent was underscored emphatically in 1998 with the arrival of the XKR. An Eaton supercharger was fitted to the robust AJ-V8 engine. This upped the power output to a heady 370 bhp. 2002 bought further enhancements still to the XKR with the V8’s capacity increasing to 4.2L and power growing to a mighty 400 bhp. Whilst the arrival of the XK8 marked the emergence of Jaguar’s first new sports car for 21 years, the XKR marked the arrival of the significantly fastest mainstream Jaguar ever.
