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THERE’S SOMETHING wonderfully extravagant about having three times the regular number of cylinders under your bonnet. Nobody has ever needed 12 cylinders in their car, yet it’s nice to know you can have it, while the engineering ingenuity which makes it possible is a wonderful thing to contemplate, even as you sit in traffic burning fuel at the rate of 8mpg.
For most of history a V12 engine was something you only found in sports cars – and properly exotic ones, too. Until, that is, Jaguar made V12 power affordable to the merely wealthy rather than the super-rich.
Fitting the V12 to the E-Type and later the XJ-S gave them the credibility to challenge the best Italy could offer, but installing it in the XJ saloon created an entirely new breed of car. Indeed, it would be several decades before BMW and Mercedes caught up, while Rolls-Royce had to wait until the Silver Seraph in 1999 and even then only got a hand-me-down BMW engine. Bentley had to wait even longer, not gaining 12 cylinders until the Continental GT arrived in 2003, powered by a pair of siamesed VR6 motors.
The XJ12 first appeared in the Series 1 car in 1972, continuing into the Series 2
