JAGUAR CENTURY: 100 Years of Automotive Excellence, great idea for your gearhead—or wannabe—giftee

JAGUAR CENTURY: 100 Years of Automotive Excellence
GILES CHAPMAN
Motorbooks International
$75.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Jaguar Century chronicles one of the auto industry’s most revered car brands, from the Jaguar SS sporting saloon to today’s F-Type sports cars, F-PACE SUV, and X-Type sedans—filled with images, history, and in-depth analyses of the incredible cars created year after year.

Automotive historian Giles Chapman showcases how company visionaries William Lyons and William Walmsley developed the brand in the trying economic times leading up to World War II before resetting Jaguar during England’s bleak postwar years, first with its XK120, then the XK140 and XK150. Sporting saloons (i.e., sedans) like the Mark 2 and Mark X established further standards for four-door luxury in the 1950s and ’60s, while the stunning E-Type unveiled in 1961 became a holy grail of automotive design and gave Jaguar a genuine 150-miles-per-hour sports car. The story continues to the present, tracing all of Jaguar’s ups and downs right up to the acclaimed all-electric I-PACE. Chapman also covers Jaguar’s rich motorsport heritage, including open-wheel Formula 1 racers and the sports cars that went head-to-head with Ferrari, Porsche, and others at legendary circuits such as Le Mans over the decades.

From pre-Depression motorcycle sidecars hammered out in a modest shop in Coventry to the cutting edge of 21st century automotive technology, Jaguar Century offers a full review of British design and engineering at its finest. The book is illustrated with hundreds of historic, contemporary, and racing photographs, as well as detailed text. It is a definitive volume no Jaguar enthusiast can be without.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: My stepmother was the Jaguar-lover's Jaguar lover. Her XJ12L was the first, and to date only, Jaguar I ever got to drive...a silver-grey lovely with oxblood red interior leather. My teenaged self was in absolute Nirvana pottering about behind that wheel! I obeyed her strict instructions to heed the speed limit and to be very defensive as a driver, because I knew how much it cost to fix damage to the beast. (Those rules were for me, not her, and the results were predictable.) The one time I got to open it up on Highway 17 between our house in Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, with her in the passenger seat, was...indescribably delightful.

That connection was why I hopped on this DRC the second I saw it. The person who has no direct experience of driving a Jaguar is still going to get a lot out of reading about the history and the ideas behind the company's scrappy independent years, through today's automobile conglomerate-owned, technological powerhouse days. The Table of Contents will show you the track the author takes to get the reader in the know with him, sharing his depths of knowledge and opinions about the storied Jaguars of past and present:

CHAPTER 1 THANKS, BILL

CHAPTER 2 AN UNLIKELY COMBINATION

CHAPTER 3 SOMETHING A BIT SPECIAL

CHAPTER 4 CAT’S OUT OF THE BAG

CHAPTER 5 HOW THEY WON THE WAR

CHAPTER 6 SPORTS CAR GENIUS

CHAPTER 7 GRACE . . . SPACE . . . PACE . . .

CHAPTER 8 MASTERS OF ENDURANCE

CHAPTER 9 SPORTS SALOONS FOR EVERYONE

CHAPTER 10 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CAR

CHAPTER 11 BOLDER WITH EVERY MOVE

CHAPTER 12 THE WORLD BEATERS

CHAPTER 13 WILDERNESS

CHAPTER 14 INDEPENDENT SPIRIT

CHAPTER 15 JAGUARS AND OUTSIDERS

CHAPTER 16 RICH UNCLE HENRY

CHAPTER 17 GETTING ITS MOJO BACK

CHAPTER 18 TOTAL RENEWAL

CHAPTER 19 THINKING BIG, AMBITIONS FULFILLED

CHAPTER 20 PLUGGED INTO THE FUTURE

POSTSCRIPT, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & PHOTO CREDITS, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX

The history of the various corporate entities, and the owners and operators of same, fascinated me. I am and always have been a passionate follower of car culture because, well, I grew up in 1960s California and Texas...go fight those odds. Design is one of Jaguar's historical strengths, but those designs had to be thought up and then thought through, to get to the place a kid could groove on them. I was aware of that early...again, California 1960s...so I really liked reading about the whys and wherefores of the gorgeous machines I saw (and see) on the streets, like these:

I confess that I miss my now-gone stepmonster (in-joke between us) when I read this book, as I've done twice now. I'd've give it to her, so we could delight in looking at and learning about the cars we both loved so well.

Whoever your gearhead giftee is, they will look on this gloriously designed and produced celebration of automotive beauty and history with delight. Triple that if Jaguar is their very favorite car.