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Thank you. I gave a work colleague a lift home a while back and the first thing I got a lecture on after he commented on how nice the interior is was how the cappings are not real wood.
I'll consider myself better prepared for such comments in future
I think there were never ever fake wood in XJ's.
Leather and wood, that's the minimum
Only because of the shining varnish on top of it, it may look plastic for the non connoisseurs or ... the jealous!
I believe, and stand to be corrected, that they are certainly real wood veneers but applied to a stable metal backing nowadays.
When we looked round the Jaguar factory some years ago they were showing us how the match the veneers and do their mirror imaging etc.
I think there were never ever fake wood in XJ's.
Leather and wood, that's the minimum
Only because of the shining varnish on top of it, it may look plastic for the non connoisseurs or ... the jealous!
Jaguar does not use faux-wood -if it looks like wood it is real wood veneer finished to a high gloss perfection and perhaps this is what might make the uninformed believe that it is plastic. It is not.
The wood in every Jaguar is unique to that car and the entire set for each interior is unique and matched for grain and colour. This makes it nearly impossible to substitute individual pieces from another Jaguar of the same model. The initials of the person who finished the wood will be found on the back side of wood piece or of its metal or plastic base -and this has been the practice at Jaguar since its inception in the 1930's.
mhamilton: any chance you can upload the sales brochure? I'd love to see one for any year of the x350.
Generally you can find various brochures on ebay , have a search. Over the years I have managed to buy brochures for most of the cars I have had since my early cars.
Easy way to tell. You will find that your door panels are "book-matched" - an almost imperceptible vertical line down the centre, the veneer is mirrored around that line from the next veneer off the block (so the veneers are very similar but not identical).
Similar things in the dash area, can't remember where.
Also as mentioned before, no two Jaguars are identical, which is why you need to check the woodwork on any particular Jag you are interested it, before all the pesky mechanicals!
I see the likes of Bentley and RR are often going to other veneers, but for me there is Only Burr Walnut (Burl Walnut). Most of the S-Types and X-Types are some other crap (possibly wood), though for example the X-Type Sovereign has Burl Walnut!
My Honda Elysion has simulated wood, which wood I would describe as obvious. (but I've never seen simulated burl walnut on any car)
Last edited by ChrisMills; Oct 29, 2020 at 01:22 AM.
In all my years of owning XJ's I've never heard anyone say they are plastic on the interior sounds like jealousy either that or they're blind
I've seen plastic interiors that are made to look like walnut on my mate's Lincoln navigator Hideous was the thought that came to mind when I saw it thought they where better in the old ones like my 68 continental with wrapped vinyl just my 2 cents worth
The mirror imaging of the wood in the XJ can be seen not only in the door fillets but also in the dash panel itself. If you examine carefully the area in the centre, around the air vents you can see the very fine vertical line in the centre where the two slices of veneer come together. They are slices made from the walnut, one directly after the other.
The use of real wood extends to every Jaguar sedan model which does have wood - meaning, not the sports models such as the E-Type or the current F-Type. Even the "entry level" X-Type used a variety of wood types: Birds-eye maple, Sapele wood:
and in the highest trim level in certain model years, burl walnut. And the modern XK had gorgeous walnut and other types of wood (Zabrano, for example):...but it is properly a "touring car" rather than a flat-out sports car like the (fabulous) F-Type.
While we are at it, Jaguars have real leather trim always on the seat surfaces, and in many models, on the entire seat, dash, door panels and even headliner (as in my F-Type), not vinyl masquerading as leather such as Mercedes uses - they call it "Artico Leather"...yup...and if your eyesight is good enough and you can read the microprint in the brochure, they explain that Artico Leather is vinyl. Jaguar does not use such trickery.
Given Burls (Burrs) are from a damaged tree hence the grain, it's amazing there's enough supply to go round, also for furniture.
...or maybe not
"Milling 30,000 Pounds of Walnut Burl"
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