Jaguar XK120 – A William Lyons masterstroke

(photo by ChuprinaStudios / Shutterstock.com)

Sir William Lyons, founder of Jaguar, had a great knack for creating cars, particularly sports cars, that looked fabulous, performed extremely well and were surprisingly affordable. The SS100 was the great pre-war example of this approach. The E-type, launched in 1961 is probably the most famous. Both cars managed to look hugely expensive and brought Aston Martin performance (if not the same cache) at a much more affordable price.  The XK120, launched in 1948, was the epitome of Bill Lyon’s extraordinary ability to blend style with advanced (though not groundbreaking) engineering, to bring about a sensational car.

The heart of the XK120 was its 3.4 litre motor. The engine was designed during the war when the factory organised its engine designers to serve the same night shifts when on duty to guard against the impact of German bombers on the factory (mainly by promptly putting out fires).

This XK motor survived, in entirely recognisable form, into the mid 1980s. In 1948, it brought to the road the twin cam arrangement that had largely been the preserve of race cars or extremely high performance machines to that time. The motor was large, handsome, and in a world of pushrod activation and even side valves, sophisticated.

Depending on compression ratio and fuel, the engine in the XK120 produced somewhere around 160BHP.

To go along with this glorious new engine, Lyons created a roadster of remarkable elegance. The XK120 had a small grille integrated into the bonnet. Inevitably, the feeble Lucas headlights were faired into the front guards in the post-war style. As a further example of a more modern and streamlined approach those long guards curved back to form an unbroken swoop that dropped to allow the driver’s elbow to protude over a low door, before lifting up and over the rear wheel and curving voluptuously into a smooth and simple tail end. The XK120 was beautiful.

In 1950 Clark Gable reported in Road & Track that he got 124 MPH out of his aluminium-bodied XK120 on a dry lake in California. The Jaguar factory and The Motor were both able to achieve the same speed on a stretch of flat road in Belgium. This was a heady speed at the time. The brakes were not really up to the task of taming the weight and speed of the car. (The brakes were smaller than those on an SS100 because the 16-inch wheels on the X120 were themselves 2 inches smaller than the SS100’s). The car handled well too – as demonstrated by its considerable racing and rallying success.

The XK120 has a purity that was lost on later versions, the XK140 and the XK150. Nonetheless, these later cars are more comfortable, still gorgeous and have rack and pinion steering in place of the XK120’s recirculating ball system. It is also worth considering coupes or convertible (as distinct from the roadster).

In episode 1 of Series 13, of Top Gear, James May drives a lovely-looking ivory coloured 1949 XK120 roadster from London to Edinburgh. There is some mouthwatering footage.

ONE TO THINK ABOUT

A Sydney dealer has an early Australian-delivered XK120 roadster in titanium grey. The car is described as being in good useable condition and the asking price is a little over $100,000.

YOUR VIEW

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