The big easy

“Rivals such as the Bentley S1 were left standing at around 100mph on the M1”

FOR BRITAIN in 1961 there was no more influential place than America. We wanted their music, liberal lifestyle, clothes and cars. Even Jaguar – conservative, despite its image as the spiv’s Bentley – was briefly captivated, and in that year unveiled the Mk X. Coventry’s new flagship owed more in its proportions to Cadillac than to previous Jaguars but was loved neither in its US target market nor in Mini-Minor Britain.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. After all, the smaller Jaguars had been selling well in America, as had its sports cars. While its biggest saloon, the Mk IX, still resembled the Mk VII of the previous decade, that car had caused a sensation in the States, too. It seemed that a new, big Jaguar would sell equally well, especially if it followed the same stylistic trend as its smaller siblings. Four headlamps were incorporated as a sop to American mores, although, with its exaggerated proportions, the whole thing looked more like an airbrushed brochure image than a real car.

Development work begun in 1958, when Jaguar’s range encompassed