1976: Thundering Elegance

January 

Jaguar was making minor changes to the model as early as 1976 with: The boot strip lettering was altered to a finer style, Changes to the door trim, Cloth interior trim became available as an option (rarely seen). The earliest cars had a plastic rim steering wheel with horn attached by a thin centre bar, in the centre of the horn push was a gold on amber oval badge. This soon changed to a leather covered wheel rim.

May 

Jaguar's Chief Engineer, Bob Knight wanted to understand more about current motor racing so in May 1976 Peter Gebbels produced a Group 5 XJ-S proposal. During the autumn of that year, Malcolm Oliver, Development Engineer and later XJ40 Project Manager, compiled a data sheet on the aerodynamics, and arranged a series of wind tunnel testing sessions at MIRA using four different wing configurations on one of the launch cars, registered JVC 482 N.

August 

Group 44 Inc., founded by Bob Tullius and Brian Fuerstenau in the 1960s had been racing the Jaguar E-type with great success, however, with the demise of the E-types in production it was necessary for Tullius to find another potential marque. British Leyland, owners of Jaguar during this period were not interested in running a racing team of its own, but were keen for Group 44 to keep the brands alive in the USA  through the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) production car races.

XJ-S chassis 2W 51120 was received into the Group 44 Herndon workshop and within a few days the road car was stripped by Lawton Foushee of its equipment. 1976 was a year that also brought about change in the USA racing environment with the SCCA introducing the Trans-Am championships for drivers and manufacturers. 

In the category that allowed the involvement of the Jaguar, teams had the ability to make certain modifications to the cars. This would include the use of 10in wide wheel rims, extended wheel arches, as well as alterations to the suspension and braking systems. This category also gave the teams a free hand over the engine to be used. Brian Fuerstenau, himself a champion in the SCCA racing forum, took responsibility for the V12 engine to be used and he avoided modifying the heart of the engine. The changes that were made consisted of scrapping the fuel injectors in favour of six carburettors. This eliminated the problems with the oil surge.  Previously, the E-types had driven only short distance races, this was going to change for the XJ-S, so the mechanical parts of the XJ-S needed to be reliable for the proposed long distances. The production of this race-capable XJ-S engine fell to Forward Engineering run by Ron Beatty who in his infinite wisdom had already begun tuning the V12 engine as soon as it had been released onto the market. The engine in question had a 475bhp at 7600rpm with a 0-100mph (0-161km/h) time of just 10.3 seconds (recorded by Road & Track magazine).

Bob Tullius’ Group 44 and the XJ-S had their debut in Mosport, Ontario on 22 August 1976, qualifying first and initially leading the pack until a problem with the oil temperature forced him to reduce speed and settle for fourth place in this category and tenth overall. The XJ-S was on its way up, Bob Tullius took the car to the Lime Rock meeting in Connecticut and was awarded best practice time and followed this with a win in the SCCA national race. With this win and his previous wins in the E-types, Bob Tullius was eligible to return to Road Atlanta. The XJ-S took pole position but he made an error on the first corner pushing him back to twelfth place. Regaining his earlier performance he managed to pull back until a carburettor leak onto the exhaust system led to an under-bonnet fire and the end of his race. The last race of the season was the IMSA Camel GT race at Daytona and unfortunately, Bob Tullius failed once again after the cockpit overheated and he had to withdraw after running fourth throughout the race. 

Even though Group 44 had failed to secure a racing foothold with the XJ-S at this point, President of Jaguar Cars Inc., Michael H Dale, commented:

“Group 44 has amply demonstrated its professional racing capability but we could not make a commitment until we had a car which would be competitive in a ‘pro’ series … the car can be a winner, and we expect its success to benefit all our cars in terms of sales promotion. That, of course, is why we are in racing.”

September 

Minor changes to the 1977 model year cars were to improve the appearance of the roof gutters. The finish was improved and the width reduced from 2W 2638. The side light fuse was changed from a 10amp to 3amp to improve the side light circuit protection from 2W 3755.a significant mechanical change was made when the original Borg Warner automatic transmission unit was replaced by the General Motors GM400 three-speed unit. The manual transmission was still available for those customers who preferred this. 

December 

The production figure for the first full year in 1976 totalled 3, 240 cars.