Valentine`s Issue:

Official Magazine of the Jaguar Clubs of North America
Valentine’s Issue:
Jaguars and Weddings
Philadelphia AGM Beckons
Make Your Slalom Debut
January-February 2015
WORKSHOP & TECHNICAL
XE BENEATH THE SKIN
This second of four XE ‘skeleton’ graphics concentrates on the XE’s aluminum body architecture – an area of automotive design and technology where Jaguar are
amongst the world’s leading experts.
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JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2015
XJ13 – A Phoenix Rises
Part 4: Fire in the hole!
By Peter Crespin and David Jones
Fifty years after the first quad cam
V12 was started up by Jim Eastwick
for Bill Heynes, Jaguar’s legendary
Chief Engineer, the scene repeated
itself 80 miles due west. The date was
October 30th 2014 and Jim Eastwick
was at Neville Swales’ workshop, in the
company of Bill Heynes’ son Jonathan
and various ex-Jaguar people and
other guests.
October was the first public startup of the Jaguar #2 quad-cam V12
engine Neville found on eBay in
Germany. Being totally genuine and
now restored, Neville is using it as
the basis of his tool room copy of
the original, pre-crash damage XJ13,
as chronicled in Jaguar Journal.
Several ex-Jaguar employees who
were involved with the original
XJ13 design, build and testing were
present and some of them shared
their recollections. Peter Wilson (ex
Competitions Department) explained
the history of this particular unit
as one of four built in 1963 and
subsequently installed in a Mk X for
road testing. Peter recalled it was
no slouch, but eventually as the V12
development
program
switched
focus from racing to road usage, the
4-cam’s cost and complexity issues,
and particularly its emissions, favored
the single cam version eventually
put into production. Consequently,
the engine fitted into Jaguar’s one
and only XJ13 effectively became
irreplaceable, until the discovery of
this second surviving engine. The
engine was displayed at the Coventry
Transport Museum in 1970 as part
of a Jaguar history display and was
then relocated to the showroom at
Brown’s Lane. For some reason, it was
subsequently sent to Jaguar Germany
and after being used in a display was
‘lost’ until 2010 when an ex-Jaguar
employee put it up for sale.
Jim Eastwick (Jaguar Experimental)
explained how, with the aid of Coventry
Climax, a single cylinder engine was
built to test combustion efficiency and
JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2015
it fell to him to prepare and run the
first V12 engine in the presence of the
great Bill Heynes. Jim recounted how,
after everything had gone according
to plan, Bill Heynes had approached
him and quietly suggested that maybe
this was not really the first time the
engine had run and that he’d probably
checked earlier to see if it worked?
There were perhaps one or two wry
smiles in Neville’s workshop last
October as that part of the story also
repeated itself, because everything
went exactly according to plan. After
Jonathan Heynes had told a few
interesting stories from his time as
a Jaguar apprentice, the time came
for Jim to fire up Neville’s example
– for which he had reconstructed a
mechanical fuel injection system.
He duly pressed the start button for
Neville’s impressive test rig and the
engine immediately burst into life
with that familiar roar that anyone
who has stood next to XJ13 would
immediately recognize.
With the test completed, celebratory
glasses of Champagne were passed
around, giving everyone the chance
to chat with Neville, Peter Wilson,
Jim Eastwick, Brian Martin (electrical
engineer for XJ13), Peter Jones
(Competitions Department), Frank
Philpott
(Jaguar
Experimental),
Jonathan Heynes and Richard Hassan
(son of Walter Hassan, a key figure
in Coventry Climax and Jaguar V12
engineering history). Neville’s exact
replica XJ13 alloy body shell was
also on display and the engine and
transaxle will be mated to it in the
coming months and will be serialized
here in Jaguar Journal. For a full view
of the hour-long video go to Neville’s
web site at www.xj13.eu or enter this
short-cut URL into your web browser:
http://tinyurl.com/l9kf5xx
Neville operates the throttle capstan as Jim Eastwick starts the engine
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