In light of some recent posts regarding various XJS-related media, I thought I'd pitch in a recent YouTube video I found interesting. I've been watching quite a bit of Jay Leno's Garage recently; he's a huge Jaguar fan and he's got a bunch of great videos on his channel featuring Jags. Last week he posted a curious feature about the 1967 Bertone Pirana, a one-off promotional car built on top of an E-Type chassis and power train. Towards the end of the driving segment (always the best part) Jay asks, "I wonder what Jaguar thought of this? I wonder if they were flattered by it, or if they thought it was an abomination of their design, ya know?" Here is the link:


In light of the XJS design efforts following not long after this, I had to ask myself the same question. While obviously different in some ways, there is a lot of XJS precursor-ing going on here. Not just because its an obvious GT car built on Jag's existing performance platform, but Sayer's cribbing from Italian styling and more up-market features of the day (air conditioning, defrosters, etc.). I was also amused by Jay's admission that he'd been wrong about condemning the car's conversion to automatic, noting how well the car drove at speed.

While only tangentially XJS-related, I thought this was interesting enough to share. Cheers!

 

it also looks like AMC may have used some design elements for the Javlin,