C ALLED ME awkward if you like,but I’ve never fully subscribed to the idea of William Lyons’ unerring talent for car styling and to my mind some of the best-looking Jaguars are those which weren’t the work of ‘the old man’ himself. Indeed, the early XJ-S is a perfect example and can’t even claim to be the work of one person since the production version ended up being the work of several people.
The project had kicked off with Malcolm Sayer as project leader, with young staff stylist Oliver Winterbottom providing styling support. The two had both produced concepts for an XJ-based sports car, with Sayer’s using pop-up lamps and a Jensen-style glass hatch, while Winterbottom had gone for a fastback style.
It was Sayer’s design which provided the essential basis of the production car, although the rejection of his glass hatch on engineering grounds had given the car its signature flying buttresses. His untimely death in 1970 however meant that it would be left to the rest of the team to finish off the details, but Winterbottom would also move to Lotus in 1971, meaning that the final production version of
