I love that they kept the old body style on sale alongside this in v12 only for another 6 years or so.

BL execs wanted Jaguar to use the Rover V8 in the XJ40, so it's strongly rumoured that Jaguar engineers specifically designed the engine bay so the V8 wouldn't fit.

This also meant that the V12 wouldn't fit either, until substantial revisions were made to the front end and engine bay in the early 90s. A great example of the battle between bean-counters and enthusiast engineers.

Not so : a good example of blinkered engineering teams and parochial management.

Reminiscent of BL not using Rover V8 engines in Triumph Stags, which many thought was due to inter-brand rivalry.

Developing the overheating prone (and heavier)Triumph V8 must have been costly.

Nonsense.

The AJ6 was well into the developement process and the 3.6 was a very good engine. we had few problems with them.

XJ40 early problems that i remember (in the dealers) were, power steering fluid bottles leaking, air con blower motors, some door mirrors, rear lights colouring fading eapidly (switzerland)

Edited by _ORB_ on 29/04/2023 at 08:44

Air conditioning blowers and yes now you remind me the digital dash displays. We had one in stock so we could fit it while the customers was sent off to be fixed.

By the way, I hated that early diagnostic system on a4 wheel trolley complete with the little printout like a till roll.

Let's not go down the road of jaguar quality control or lack of it

The 2.9 aj6 was said to have problems. But oddly I never saw one.

Edited by _ORB_ on 29/04/2023 at 08:52