Thursday, 17 March 2016

The Cat is Back – the XK8 (X100) Story’

Following the success of the 48th Annual Yorkshire Region Dinner, it was back to business as usual on Tuesday 1 December for the final presentation of the 2015 Yorkshire Region Lecture Program.

A packed room gathered at the Holiday Inn, Brighouse for the return of Peter Leake and ‘The Cat is Back – the XK8 (X100) Story’.

Peter is always a popular speaker and the presentation was delivered in his familiar high octane style. He spoke initially about the history of Jaguar and of his career with the company, with obvious passion for the marque, before moving on to the main topic the story of the XK8.

Using a combination of slides, videos and personal anecdotes, Peter brought the story of this iconic car to life, from the first concept in the early 90’s through development and on to the runaway sales success that the model became, before production finally ended in 2005 as the final vehicle built at the iconic Browns Lane works.

Based around a heavily modified XJS platform (which it had in common with the Aston Martin DB7), production was initially planned to be around 70,000 vehicles over the life of the model, but the car proved such a success that over 95,000 examples were finally produced before the replacement XK (X150) went into production.

Peter also covered the development of the power plant for the car, the new AJ-V8 engine and its subsequent variants alongside the myriad of enhancements and options available on the model throughout production. He also gave a fascinating insight into the XK180 concept car and the revolutionary XK-RR – the one that got away…

The evening closed with questions from the floor, before Yorkshire Region Chairman Ivan Marriott led the thanks to Peter for an excellent presentation.

Dave Foster

Yorkshire Region