THIRD ACT

The final incarnation of the original Jaguar XJ introduced in 1968, the Series 3 is one of those classic tales of the British motor industry which was born out of desperation yet which went on to be a winner.

The simple truth is that, had the XJ40 programme not fallen desperately behind, then we’d never have seen the Series 3 XJ at all, since the all-new car would have arrived in 1977. That, however, would have been a great shame since the car which was meant to have been a stop-gap turned out to be a world-beater and was still winning group tests against heavyweight German opposition right into the 1990s.

In fact, the car even overlapped its own successor since the XJ40 wasn’t offered with the V12 powerplant until 1993 and the Series 3 remained