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With you all the way Glyn. The S type with round arches is hideous. Can you imagine taking an E Type with flat top arches and making them round. Leave well alone I say and stick with the original design. If you do not like it buy another car.
We are talking Coombs rear spats but I have yet to see an original Coombs Mk2 (33 made) with rear spats of any design. The rear spats were removed, the arches were rolled which allowed wider tyres but no spats.
If you are going to make a Coombs look a like then maybe you need to take it to a body shop that can replicate the original rather than sticking a plastic spat on the side. Just saying!
The Nash Metropolitan was simply an ugly car all round whereas the Alfa Berlina 2000's from the late fifty's to the Seventies with cut down rear arch & round front arch were handsome cars. Lyons is known to have been influenced by Alfa & Frank Feeley at Aston Martin.
Last edited by Glyn M Ruck; Dec 31, 2020 at 06:55 AM.
I think the S-Type would have seen stronger sales with open wheel arches like the red car shows here, is it in Australia. I cannot recognize the license plate.
Its rear end look is more dynamic and reminds me of the rear quarter panel of a Bentley Continental 1994 that a friend owns.
When looking at the Serie 1 XJ6, we see that Jaguar got the message and have applied the concept with the results we know: sales jumped.
Done with the heavy loooks of the 420G and S-Type altogether.
Why create the Metropolitan when there was the lovely A40 Sports that had the same chassis and running gear, but looked like a car?
Back to the wheel arches: the MK2 never had 'spats' in the Jaguar vocabulary, they were 'valances.' My own preference for the Mk2 is a welded in Coombs look as achieved in some of the restomods on this forum. The profile of the rolled edge should match the front arch. To appear good from all angles, I think it helps if the wheels are wider or have a different offset to fill the arch.
I think the S-Type would have seen stronger sales with open wheel arches like the red car shows here, is it in Australia. I cannot recognize the license plate.
Its rear end look is more dynamic and reminds me of the rear quarter panel of a Bentley Continental 1994 that a friend owns.
When looking at the Serie 1 XJ6, we see that Jaguar got the message and have applied the concept with the results we know: sales jumped.
Done with the heavy loooks of the 420G and S-Type altogether.
It's in Aus. One thing I do quite like is the under front bumper front valance/skirt. I've seen it in the flesh. Those rear arches look most peculiar from some angles. Larger than standard tyres help them a bit. The rear track is too narrow for those arches.
While the S Type was controversial not only was the XJ6 a pretty car but sales jumped because it was basically a single model that replaced 240, 340 (Mk2's), Daimler V8, S Types, 420G & 420/Sovereign. Of course Alfa owners will remind one that the XJ6 was heavily influenced by the 60's GTV but in 4 door form.
Last edited by Glyn M Ruck; Dec 31, 2020 at 08:23 PM.
Happy New Year. Unfortunately for Jaguar from then on in global markets Mercedes was starting to give them a bit of a hiding. Where home market pricing was not an advantage.
Last edited by Glyn M Ruck; Dec 31, 2020 at 08:12 PM.
With you all the way Glyn. The S type with round arches is hideous. Can you imagine taking an E Type with flat top arches and making them round. Leave well alone I say and stick with the original design. If you do not like it buy another car.
We are talking Coombs rear spats but I have yet to see an original Coombs Mk2 (33 made) with rear spats of any design. The rear spats were removed, the arches were rolled which allowed wider tyres but no spats.
If you are going to make a Coombs look a like then maybe you need to take it to a body shop that can replicate the original rather than sticking a plastic spat on the side. Just saying!
IMHO I think the S-Type with round arches looks rather smart but then I also like the standard arches, what I don't like (having rebuilt an S-Type and spent a lot of time looking at it) is that the rear door shape follows the MK2 arch line which is nowhere near the S-Type arch and to my eyes it looks wrong.
This is made even more strange as the MK2 and S-Type doors are not interchangable as the door lock mounting is different, it seems odd that if they could make a new inner door shell for the S-Type then why couldn't they make a different shape for the S-Type? If they were adamant that they wanted to use the same door across the models to save costs then why didn't they fit the improved S-Type locking system to the MK2 to standardise? Its all a bit bonkers when you consider how much of the S-Type was altered from the MK2, surely altering the rear door would have been neither here nor there.
what is wrong with the S type's rear wheel arches is the relation between the width and height of the entire rear WING, to the size of the rear wheel arch cutout.
in other words, the rear wing is too tall vertically and long horizontally for the small cutout of the S type., so it looks wrong to so many MK-2 and S type / 420 owners. If it wasn't like that, the S type would reign above the MK-2 because it is after all, the better of the two models.
I too have spent time looking for a solution for my own car.
the conclusion (for my taste), is to graft or copy the XJ-6 Series 1, 2, or 3 rear cutouts, which are a midpoint between the MK-2 and the S type / 420 rear cutouts, not too big, not too small, the proportions at the rear wing are just about right in the XJ-6.
A gentleman in Seaton Devon who was the Chairman of the JEC in that area bought an S Type to go with his XJS. Took it to many shows then I met him at a show one day with my freshly restored S Type. I immediately notice his front wheel arches were different to mine, more square topped than round. Mine are original his it turned out had been repaired before he purchased the car with repair arches from a 420. He had not been aware of the difference until the two cars were side by side. These are the best photos I have of the car from the side but you can clearly see the squared off front wheel arch.
