It must have been very interesting to work at SVO(special vehicle operations) at Jaguar. I wonder if there are any books or articles wriiten about some of projects produced at SVO?

 

Here are some of the cars that were produce in SVO
Daimler Corsica
1996 was Daimler’s centenary, and it was felt that something special should be done in celebration. Thus the Corsica was born: a 2-door convertible version of the Daimler Six saloon

Jaguar XJR Firechase Thrust SSC Fire & Rescue Vehicle 1998
At the time the worlds fastest fire engine.
Was to become Silverstone Racing Circuits Jaguar Fire tender.

XK180 Concept 1999
The Jaguar XK 180 was a concept car created by Jaguar Cars to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the XK car and to show the world the skills of Jaguar stylists, craftsmen and engineers.
2 cars were built, one for the car shows around the world and the other was for Head Director of Ford Motor Company, as Ford owned Jaguar cars at that time. The second version was my favourite as it had Tan leather and Suede interior.

 

The Corsica was only a shell and never finished by Jaguar. It was left to David Marks Garages to make it into a complete running vehicle:

David Marks Garages - Daimler Corsica Project, Part 1

David Marks Garages - Daimler Corsica Project, Part 2

A beautiful car.

Graham

 

The suspension and brakes were modified to accomodate the 20" BBS Wheels. I was wondering if you had any guesstimate as to how long the car was in SVO for modifications?

 

The interior trim was done by Svo as I did all the sewing, and the fitting of all the interior was done in SVO workshop.

 

Any idea why Jaguar never finished it? It had to be a reasonably easy task for SVO to do the mechanical and electrical installations.

I missed the rest of the David Marks links:

David Marks Garages - Daimler Corsica Project, Part 3

David Marks Garages - Daimler Corsica Project, Part 4

David Marks Garages - Daimler Corsica Project, Part 5

The final part shows:

Designed and built by Special Vehicle Operations, Jaguar Cars Ltd 1996

"Brought to Life" by David Marks Garages 2006/2007 on behalf of the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust


Graham

 

Once the car was completed, it was never returned to SVO for any modifications, that I can remember, sorry can't help you there.

I must apologise for my lack of memory, regarding the red and green Burberry cars. I was looking through my pictures and photos of work we had done through from 1994 to 2008, and I came across the pictures of both cars. So I spoke to my (now retired) manager Gary Albrighton about the projects and he confirms that we did the red car in 1999 for Marketing purpose and the green in 2001 for Burberry. The red car, only had door inserts, rear quarter inserts and the tonneau cover, whereas the green car had the seat inserts added along with door inserts, and tonneau, but not the rear quarter.

 

I can confirm that 2005 and 2006, our team of 15 people was reduced to 7 with most taking early retirement packages including the manager, at this time SVO had become ETO (Engineered to Order) and so we moved to Whitley where myself and another trimmer joined Design Studios, and the remaining team then moved to Solihull SVO department, hence the end of SVO

 

Sandra
Thanks for the very interesting information. Very little information about these cars have ever been documented. Thanks Again for the information.