Features
Back to Library >
To the power of 12
3 years ago
The XJ12 was created by squeezing Jaguar's 6-litre V12 into the XJ40
It looked like there’d be a little time before the wall of black hit our road. Maybe we could outrun it. With 2000 miles behind us since we’d left New Jersey three days earlier, we were well aware of the XJ12’s relentless ability. Could its pace now push us clear? Both lanes ahead, flat and straight, were empty for miles; nothing approached on the other side either; and our police scanner hadn’t bleeped for hours.
I floored the throttle. You barely felt or heard the 5994cc V12 at idle nor when cruising at 75 or 80mph. But as the Jag galloped towards the horizon, it issued a dignified thrum. At 5800rpm and 120mph she shifted into top and stormed on. Jaguar reckoned it’d top out at 155mph. I settled at 140. Wind noise grew noticeable and the engine’s hum was a constant now, but so was the Jaguar’s steadfastness. The cloud bank drew ever closer to the road. The lightning, flashing constantly, struck a lonely tree not far off, lighting it up like a ghostly vision. But as the Jaguar ate the miles we saw we would clear the storm’s path before it hit US-2.
Just to be sure, I kept up the pace until the last vestige of gloom faded in the mirror. Just east of Norwich, not long after I eased back to the 65mph limit, our detector squawked as we crested a rise and it locked onto a trooper’s radar.
"On a wide dirt road into Montana, the Jaguar remained sure-footed. Power could push the tail into oversteer slides on the long, clear exits. Working it a little, rally-style, with a brush of the left foot on the brakes, would cock it neatly sideways before the bend"
We grinned in appreciation of our luck and dribbled on to the airbase town of Minot. From a motel up on a ridge we looked back across the prairie in the evening light at the ever-changing drama in the sky. Now we understood the intensity of Great Plains weather. With Jaguar’s oft-mooted virtues of grace and pace more abundant than ever in this newly created XJ12, we’d eluded it.
The car’s ability vindicated Jaguar’s belated decision to squeeze the redeveloped, bigger and more powerful 6-litre V12 into the already six-year-old XJ40. The 5.3-litre V12 had expired with the Series III XJ. When Jaguar was planning its XJ40 successor, it feared Leyland would impose upon it Rover’s (née Buick’s) pushrod V8… so Browns Lane’s engineers ensured the XJ40’s engine bay wouldn’t accept a V-engine.
But the move backfired when Mercedes and BMW produced V12s. Jaguar had to scramble and at a cost of some £35m, changed 60 body panels to accommodate the resurrected single overhead cam 24-valve V12 and new four-speed GM transmission. It went on sale in ’93, just a year before the end of the XJ40’s life, with 318bhp at 5400rpm giving it 160bhp/tonne (against the Mercedes 500SE’s 163), 0-60mph in 6.9 seconds and 155mph, making it Jaguar’s fastest saloon until that time.
"Climbing west over the 10,200ft Bighorn Mountains into Wyoming was more meat and drink for the Jaguar. The breadth of its power chimed with the accuracy of the steering, the reliable grip, the brakes’ strength and progression and, as always, the composed ride flowing from the way the suspension harmonised with the tyres"
We’d come up through Michigan and across the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, with Lake Michigan spreading on our left and Lake Huron on our right, to the Upper Peninsula to pick up US-2, the most northerly of the great trans-US highways. It lollops, often close to the Canadian border, 2000 miles to Seattle. For years I’d heard of Old Route 2’s isolated charm. Friends said it was like travelling in America in the Fifties; mom and pop motels, family-run diners and homespun towns of solid Midwesterners.
Maps don’t prepare you for the size and grandeur of the lakes and their glistening beaches. Superior is more than 300 miles across. Its expanse of sparkling blue water makes you think you’ve reached the Pacific. But 100mph winter winds play havoc: more than 500 ships lie wrecked along an 80-mile stretch of Superior’s coastline.
As we ran west for Wisconsin and Minnesota on Old Route 2’s aged carriageways, the Jaguar’s effortlessly-delivered torque – 342lb ft at a high 3750rpm, though it felt snappier than that – eased us past pickups towing boats, and motorhomes tugging small cars, with time and space to spare.
Beyond the thousands of lakes and massed trees of Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest the country flattened to the vast black-dirt plains of North Dakota. The stretches between the worthy grain and vegetable-economy towns grew to 30, 40, 50 miles. In a roadhouse I heard a baseball-capped farmer hunched over coffee mutter to another: ‘Was out working some stubble this morning and that ground was stickier than a bear in a honey shower.’ It was surprisingly involving country: not perfectly flat as you might imagine but gently rolling with kicked-up hillocks and gulleys.
Just before the Montana border, after 1010 miles on US-2, we swung south to see Fort Union, a stockade beside the Missouri River. Its fading white-washed 18ft-high cottonwood log walls looked forlorn. Once, it was the biggest trading post on the Great Plains and dubbed ‘the Times Square of the prairies’.
On a wide dirt road into Montana, the Jaguar remained sure-footed, unaffected by corrugations or occasional sand washes. Power could push the tail into oversteer slides on the long, clear exits. Working it a little, rally-style, with a brush of the left foot on the brakes, would cock it neatly sideways before the bend. Impressive poise, precision and control for a luxury saloon.
In Montana’s south-east corner we spent a morning on the low, rolling hills and gulleys above the Little Bighorn River. The light yellow-green prairie grass and wild flowers created peaceful vistas. But it was here that Lt Col George Custer and 267 of his 7th Cavalry soldiers died on 5 June 1876 at the hands of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s 2000 Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. The desperate rifle emplacements the troops scraped with knives and mess tins told the story all too clearly.
Climbing west over the 10,200ft Bighorn Mountains into Wyoming was more meat and drink for the Jaguar. The breadth of its power chimed with the accuracy of the steering, the reliable grip, the brakes’ strength and progression and, as always, the composed ride flowing from the way the suspension – double wishbones at the front, lower wishbones and upper links at the rear – harmonised with the absorbent 225/55 R16 tyres.
In Yellowstone National Park, a volcanic plateau with more than two million acres of steaming geysers, amazing sights ambushed us everywhere: crystalline lakes, thundering waterfalls and shaggy bison grazing on riverbanks. Right on schedule in the evening sun the famous Old Faithful geyser spouted 11,000 gallons of boiling water 180ft into the air.
We bolted across Idaho’s potato-growing flatlands before striking across drier sagebrush ranching country, pausing there to chat with chapped-and-hatted cowboys on palominos rounding up cattle, then pushed into the tall forests and lingering snow of Oregon’s long Cascade Range, the last great barrier before the coast. Crater Lake topped the spectacular views as we gazed from a high bank of snow round the crater’s edge across the deep, deep blue of rainwater accumulated over millennia.
"Until you stand among the great Redwood trees of the Humboldt State Park you don’t believe their size. Further on, we reached California’s famous coast-hugging Highway 1 – rugged, wildly beautiful, with hills rolling to the sea, broken bluffs and few beaches. We drove slowly, enjoying the sunset, and rolled into Mendocino, the quaint Victorian clapboard town built around the clifftop by emigrant New Englanders"
Then came the oasis of gentility that is Ashland, a cute mountainside town in timber and dairy farming country that’s known for the Shakespeare festival it’s staged since 1935. Stylish hotels and restaurants brought relief from the no-frills motels and unrelenting beef, potatoes and apple pie menus of the prairies.
Next morning, the 200 miles of twists and turns of California’s Klamath River Highway took us through the Pacific Coast Ranges to the ocean. Even after 3900 miles, the Jaguar impressed with the way it could be pushed hard enough to deliver driver satisfaction and yet retain the composure that ensures passenger ease.
Few of its contemporaries could boast similar poise under power and brakes, a boon on such challenging roads. But while its wood and leather ambience and comfortable front seats cosseted two people, its low and tight rear seat would not have served four well.
Until you stand among the great Redwood trees of the Humboldt State Park you don’t believe their size. Further on, we reached California’s famous coast-hugging Highway 1 – rugged, wildly beautiful, with hills rolling to the sea, broken bluffs and few beaches. We drove slowly, enjoying the sunset, and rolled into Mendocino, the quaint Victorian clapboard town built around the clifftop by emigrant New Englanders. No shortage of fine places to eat here.
Sea mist, pale white in the early sun, clung to the coast on the 140-mile run down to San Francisco next morning. It was a lazy drive down a languid, largely undeveloped coast, spiced with sights like sea eagles overhead and harbour seals gambolling at the river mouths. We wanted to be in Los Angeles by sundown so we picked up Interstate 5 for the last 400 miles. It was strange being back in teeming traffic after thousands of miles of emptiness. Despite our pace from coast-to-coast, we’d had just one painless brush with the law. The Montana trooper who stopped me for being 7mph over the 65mph limit fined me $5 for ‘an unnecessary waste of a natural resource’; derisory fines were Montana’s way of protesting (along with Arizona, Idaho and Nevada) against the federally imposed limit.
When we pulled up at LAX, the unruffled Jaguar had logged 4828 miles in 10 days and averaged 50.7mph and 18.7mpg. Wendy said: ‘If you weren’t tuned into just how good cars can be you’d probably never realise how special this is.’ She was right. The V12 might have been late to the XJ40 party, but it did put the icing on an ambrosial cake.
Photography courtesy of Mel Nichols
