The chief product engineer for the XF Sportbrake talks about his career, including overseeing the current XJ and his youthful exuberance in an XJ-S
FEW PEOPLE devote their entire career to one company any more, but Alan Hill has done just that. The chief product engineer for the XF Sport brake joined Jaguar as a 16-year-old apprentice in 1984. “I’ve worked for Jaguar man and boy,” he laughs. “It’s been quite a journey.”
Alan’s career began with the XJ-S, as the engineer responsible for the car’s brakes. “I still remember my first drive in one,” he says wistfully. “I’d just passed my driving test and was handed the keys to a V12. Within minutes, I’d spun it through 180 degrees and was facing oncoming traffic.” He also has vivid memories of brake-fade tests, which involved 20 successive stops from 100mph. “Nowadays, you could replicate that on a rolling road, but back then everything was done manually. I ended up feeling pretty unwell.”
Esta historia es de la edición December 2017 de Jaguar World Monthly.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 2017 de Jaguar World Monthly.
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The Old Way
With manufacture of the X351 XJ now finished, the F-TYPE takes over the mantle of Jaguar’s oldest production model. To discover more about the continuing allure of this six-year-old sports car, we drive a 380PS V6 convertible from Lincoln to Bath on the UK’s oldest road, the Fosse Way
Saving Jaguar
On the brink of the abyss in the early Eighties, Jaguar saw its fortunes turned around by a new chairman, John Egan. We meet up with him at the Jaguar Heritage Trust at Gaydon to talk about his strategies for the company’s recovery
Rolling road
A SNOWY February morning is not the ideal time to be taking out a pristine Jaguar E-type, and an early Series 1, flat-floor model at that. But my mate Bryan Smart has booked his in for a three hour session on a rolling road, and doesn’t want to miss the appointment. He’s not looking for more power – this car is standard, but it doesn’t idle as smoothly as it should. He’s not bad with spanners himself, but neither he nor a couple of specialists have been able to solve the issue.
Jaguar World's Technical Advice Service
E knock off
1966 E-Type Fixed Head Coupe
Trimmed and ready to be toned, Jim’s E-type Series 1 fixedhead returns home fromMCT Restorations
Favourite things
With a 300PS diesel engine and a lightweight, handsome body, the XF 3.0 TDV6 S could be the editor’s best-choice saloon of the current range. To discover if that’s true, he takes an example to a well-loved location of his, the Yorkshire Dales.
Jim Patten
MOT exemption
Time Warp
Carcoon will be 25 years old in 2018, so we meet the people behind the scenes to discover how the bubble idea came about
1984 XJ6 Series 3 4.2 Sovereign
Iain relays the joys and disappointments of buying an XJ6 Series 3 project car for our sister title, Classics Monthly
Family Ties
Despite the thirty years that separate the E-type 2+2 Series 1 from the XK8 they have many similarities – such as being fun and the added practicality of four seats to attract the family man. We test 4.2-litre versions of both cars back-to-back.
