Jaguar XK 180

[Jaguar Owners Club]

  Jaguar XK180 - The Jaguar concept that followed the XJ220 By Ian Norris November 8, 2013 / Photos by Getty Images

Concept cars are supermodels— smooth, sleek, perfectly finished, and only really at home on the catwalk of a show stand. Sports cars are tennis champions— lithe, agile, sure of foot, and capable of unleashing great power. In the XK 180, Jaguar has tried to cloak the power and athleticism of Pete Sampras with the looks of Cindy Crawford. After driving the car, I can confirm that Browns Lane has just about pulled it off.

The XK 180 has all the qualities of a concept car. There are just two in the world, and between them they have excited crowds at the Paris, Berlin, Detroit, New York, Toronto, and Birmingham auto shows. But since then, one of them has been driven so hard that the rear Pirellis wore out in less than a thousand miles. It fell to Road & Trackto start bedding in the new set with some quick laps of the Bugatti circuit at Jaguar’s second home, Le Mans.
The XK 180 story began with a couple of Jaguar executives chatting over a drink. The topic was the 50th anniversary of the XK engine and how to celebrate it. The classic 6-cylinder had been unveiled at the London show in the fall of 1948 in the XK-120, a sports car designed purely to show off the engine. Why not make another 2-seater, underlining the end of an era by showcasing the XK’s successor, the AJ-series V8?

The nice thing about working for Jaguar is that you can think such thoughts, and the nice thing about working for today’s Jaguar, with the resources of Ford behind it, is that an enlightened management will give such ideas the go-ahead. The target was to show the car at the Paris salon in the fall of 1998, and there were just 42 weeks to go.
The budget was adequate, though not overgenerous, but the manpower availability was strictly limited. Jaguar's styling department under Geoff Lawson was overloaded with work on the S-Type and the X400, due in 2001, but the anniversary project captured their imagination. Keith Helfet, who had contributed so much to the XJ220, was spared to work on the car. The task of building it was giv­en over to a team led by Gary Al-brighton, principal engineer in what is now called Special Vehicle Operations. In pre-takeover days, the department had built special limousines for royalty and diplomats, and there was little its craftsmen could not do when it came to hand-building cars.

It had been decided that the ideal base for the project— which didn’t get its “XK 180” tag until the very last minute—would be a shortened XKR convertible, and Helfet set to work sketching his ideas. He didn’t want it to look like a “cut-and-shut” effort, and in addition to taking 5 inches out of the XKR’s wheelbase, he reduced the front and rear overhangs to create a car 13.5 in. shorter than the original. The decision to use an aluminum body pro­vided a direct link to the original XK-120, which, with only limited production in view, had also been built in the light metal. A further link was that the XK 180 body was made by Abbey Panels, the same Coventry company that built the original 120. The methods didn’t change either—every panel n the 180 was hand-formed using that most accurate of measuring devices, the human eye.

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As the craftsmen at SVO and Abbey Panels worked through the spring and summer, Jaguar’s engineers were making the car capable of achieving the performance its looks implied. An XKR was shortened to create an engineering mule, and the major components of the XK 180 were put together and tested. The supercharger on the V8 was geared up to provide 450 horsepower, rather than the 370 it puts out in standard form. The brakes and suspension were uprated to give a commensurate improvement in handling. A change dictated equally by styling and engineering considerations was the use of 20-in. wheels, the largest ever seen on a Jaguar. The chosen gearbox was the 5-speed auto­matic Mercedes-Benz unit used on the XKR, specially modified to allow it to be operated by buttons mounted on the steering wheel.

As the mule carried out its test program, the XK 180 took shape, and it was polished and packed off to Paris right on schedule. Back in Coventry, SVO was working on a second, left- hand-drive car for Detroit. The XK 180 was always designed to be a real-world car rather than a showpiece, so after a busy winter season of auto shows, SVO started preparing Number One to show its paces. Test drivers took it to its limits, finding minor points that needed correcting, and after the work had been done the car was made available for circuit testing— which was how I came to be admiring it as it stood in front of the pits at Le Mans. 
There’s a strong feel of D-Type about the front end, emphasized by the lozenge-shaped “Jaguar” badge the company used on its three-time Le Mans winner. The rear three-quarter—which is the car’s best view— is all curves, with a carefully integrated wing at the back of the lid that gives access to a surprisingly spacious trunk.

Slipping into the driving or passenger seat is easy, and even if you are broad-beamed and over 6-foot-4 (a rough description of your humble scribe), there is plenty of room. It comes as a pleasant surprise to find that not only is this showpiece gifted with acres of leg room, but that the seat travels fore and aft by means of electricity. Those who have seen show specials with plaster seats screwed to a wooden floor will appreciate this evidence of the XK 180’s role as a real car, not a static showpiece. The seats are Recaro buckets with 4-point harnesses, and they put both driver and passenger at ease for proper motoring pleasure. They are the major white component in an interior color scheme that combines white and Racing Green Connolly leather with engine-turned aluminum. The dash provides the biggest helping of metal, and has the speedometer and rev counter right ahead of the driver, easily visible through the small steering wheel with its aluminum frame and hand-stitched green leather rim. The leather spreads along the spokes to surround the gearshift buttons, up on the left and down on the right, and the whole is very pleasant to the touch.

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The aluminum-topped transmission tunnel carries a characteristic Jaguar “J-gate” shift lever and gate— except that this one is a reversed “L,” not a “J.” manual selection has moved from the left-hand leg of the J to the steering wheel, and moving the lever to the left and leaving it there passes gear-selection control over to the buttons.

Behind the gate is the portal to the wonderful world of the XK 180, in the shape of that suddenly fashionable accessory, a big red starter button. Pressing it lets loose 450 very well-behaved horses. Where you might expect a Fifties’ Le Mans racer bellow, you actually hear the very civilized purr of a Jaguar of the Nineties.

The impression is underlined for me when, after slipping the gear selector into Drive, I accelerate down the pit lane. The Jaguar builds up speed smoothly and almost silently. Coming out of the pits the car is already doing 60, and it continues accelerating easily around the gentle right-hander that, in former years, went swooping up a mild gradient to the arch of the Dunlop bridge. The bridge is still there, but now there is a sharp left-right kink to slow that headlong rush.

Driving the 180 like a road car, slowing on the brakes and letting the automatic do any downshifting that might be necessary, you can appreciate it as a high-speed tourer. The chassis is smooth and silent, while the stance through the corners is foursquare and solid. The Bugatti circuit, laid out in a kerchief-sized area behind the Le Mans pits, turns off the main circuit before the famous Esses and twists through the pits’ backyard to make a lap length of just under two miles. It’s a good mix of right and left-hand corners, but perhaps relies too much on open hairpins (there are three of them) joining short straight sections.

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But heck, I’m in the only fully driveable XK 180 on earth— I’m not here to complain about the circuit, and after another lap in automatic mode, I feel confident enough to shove the lever over to the left and start using the buttons to shift. As I do, the car seems to sense that we now mean business. On the first laps, the exhaust has sounded sporty but refined; now, using the throttle more aggressively and shifting up and down for braking and acceleration, the 180 clears its throat. From the cockpit, there are two definite elements to the aural sensation. Up ahead, the supercharger sings its whining song in harmony with the normal sounds of a V8 working for its living. From behind, the two fat exhaust pipes let out a throaty bellow. The whole symphony rises and falls in direct relation to the way you play the throttle, and to sit there between the sound sources is the finest demonstration of stereo you’re likely to hear in a long time.

Coming off the main circuit and into the infield now calls for meaningful, but not harsh, braking and two stabs on the right-hand “down” shift button. The car loses speed quickly and smoothly— although not, perhaps, as smoothly as it would with a manual box— and grips perfectly as you accelerate through and out of the turn. There’s no screaming of tires and, amazingly for a car that was completely handbuilt, there are no creaks or bumps from the chassis or body. The only evidence that this is something special is the “tink” you hear as small pieces of gravel left on the track are shot up to hit the underside o f the aluminum bodywork.

Getting to know the circuit better, you now pass the pits at around 100 mph and haul the car down for the approach to the Dunlop bridge with more enthusiasm. This isn’t a race car, and I’m no Paul Frere, so I drive circumspectly, as I would on a fast road trip. Earlier in the day British driver Win Percy, a sedan-racing specialist with a fistful of titles to his name, had taken the 180 out for a few laps and gone into racing-speed territory. He’d backed off because of uncertainty about braking at the limit, but admitted when he talked about it afterward that he was asking the 180 to do things that normally he would ask only of a race-prepared car.

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As for me, I was content to confirm that this car would make a fine tourer. There’s no top, but who cares? The uniquely shaped “double-bubble” windshield combines with the fixed side windows to keep the occupants untroubled by turbulence, and the suspension is fully up to Jaguar standards of comfort.

If it’s so good, Jaguar will make it, yes? Unfortunately, no. This is the company that is still making efforts to sell the last XJ220s, and at a third of their original list price. Making a concept car that will acquit itself on road and track is difficult enough, but making one that will sell legally across the world is even harder. After the XJ220 experience, the company labored long and hard on a business plan to see if the XK 180 could be made to work as a limited-production supercar. The calculations didn’t make financial sense, and now that it is a member of the Ford family, Jaguar is acutely aware of where the bottom line is.

So the bad news is there’ll be no production of this superb machine. The good news, however, is that now it has presented its calling card, Jaguar Special Vehicle Operations is well and truly open for business. Later this year, SVO will sell the 20-in. wheel and tire package of the XK 180, along with an uprated brake setup, for the XKR. The XKR goes on sale in the U.S. as a 2000 model year car at about the same time, so get your orders in early.