Thirty years of Jaguar XJ40: great celebration in Dunkeld (Scotland)
Before I published my extensive report with many photographs on the xj40.com forum of the great and impressive meeting in Dunkeld, I contributed a first impression in the 'Dunkeld topic' (it is over here). That topic on the forum was started on December 14th, 2014 by Rory Semple, the initiator of the whole idea. After a lot of contributions, the impressions of several forum members were also added. Below you find mine.
My first impression
30 August 2016
Yes, it was a more than great event indeed! In one way or another it feels comfortable with the people around ('guys', the Scottish say to everyone, is our experience the past 1.5 week). Just as in Beaulieu in 2014, it seems that most of us speak the same, friendly, welcoming language and several people repeated that this stuck them. Pity that I had to think longer about my English (and German) than normal. And I sometimes forgot who said what to me).
Everyone saw me taking millions of photos, with a 10 year old DSLR from my late father, but as we are still in the UK (in a cosy oldfashioned Inn in the middle of the sheep-lined landscape) I will postpone managing the photos till we are at home. During the rally, Sabine took photos through the sunroof and even filmed, as far as possible without looking to the viewfinder (of the more modern compact Nikon) …
By the way, in one way or another it is exciting to see an XJ40 appearing at the end of the part of the road that is visible before the next bent. "Hé, great, Simon and Jill in their XJ12, fantastic!" (times five). Although we were aware of that we should drive not too fast and we were explicitly forbidden to form convoys, to some extent it was exciting to corner sometimes a little faster, in particular on this type of roads with endless bents (not known in our part of NL). The art is to stretch the g-force that your navigator will bear without asking to slow down slowly, after assuring that you know what you are doing and that the rebuilt front suspension really can handle this kind of g-forces. In the end we were not racing at all, apart from that I don't know how to do that. But the relaxt chasing an other XJ40, or two, or seeing two behind you, is even more exciting of seeing 40 of them on a car park.
The talks or addresses of lectures or what these are called, were incredibly interesting. We realised that nobody had thought about recording them, because in the end I value the words of in particular Jim Randle very much. Just before the lectures of the last evening I asked permission to John and mr. Randle to (try to) record it with my phone, as far as technology permits (without the intention to make it public). The talk of Jim Randle was incredibly interesting, but it was a pity that many attendees could not really hear what he was saying as the audio did not function properly and Jim has a very modest voice and seem to be a modest man, in particular compared to what he achieved (of which this meet is a convincing proof).
After mentioning the personality and importance of "Sir William" (no surname needed), within a few minutes Jim dived deep into the design of the front suspension of the XJ40, the incredible clever work Bob Knight did on its predecessor and all the technical trade-offs that had to be made after coming up with an apparently very clever idea. I guess I was not the only one who could not really value this expliqué, but I was so fascinated that I understood him even on a 20 meter distance. Yes, Starbuck [an Australian forum member], I immediately thought of your expertise, you would have enjoyed every second of it! Randle told us also about (the technical aspects of) the designs of possible successors of the XJ40, the XJ90, the X300 and about the closely related roots of the Aston Martin DB7 (essentially a Jaguar development brought to the market by a brand that solely because of its name could charge £ 10,000 pound more for it than Jaguar could, hence making the business case that Jaguar couldn't set, if I understood Jim correctly!) and the XK8.
I thought I had a clever question at the end, because I not only knew that the technical design of the XJ40 was altered very much with the MY1993, but I had experienced very recently that that this design was not really adequately fitted for the V12 XJ40 that saw daylight as MY1993.25 or XJ81. In the end, it was very special to have almost ten XJ81s in Dunkeld, and even drive with four XJ81s in a sequence during the rally. I was very curious to hear Randle commenting on both aspects, but he briefly answered that I referred to the Ford-era and that he had nothing to do with it … (although he mentioned the successors of the XJ40?!).
Another interesting observation was that in Beaulieu, almost immediately all bonnets were open, while in Dunkeld they remain closed. I discussed some of my questions with e.g. Leo, Carl and Derek (thanks guys), but in one way or another Dunkeld did not turn out to be a primarily technical meeting. It was very sociable and very warm.
And a further observation. Several people, also the contributors to its development, argued that no car before, but also no car after the XJ40, not even a more recent Jag, achieved the refinement of the XJ40. As I have almost never driven other cars than Rovers SD1s and XJ40s I cannot speak on this, but it seems an astonishing achievement that this car is indeed so good to drive.
I hope you agree with me that mentioning only a few persons above does not mean that the contribution of others were not valuable, but is just not practical to mention them all and try not to forget someone! Thank you all very much, you made it a great event!
Rens
Next page: extensive report with tens of photos
Overview and introduction: meeting to celebrate thirty years of Jaguar XJ40 in Dunkeld, 28 and 29 August 2016
Kind regards,
Rens Swart