Lifting the bonnet gives one quite a surprise. An enormous air-cleaner was a attached to an old type air box feeding the carbs and blocked the view of this magnificent mill. There was, thus, a surplus of engines in addition to an established production line. It is an unusual unit, as engines go, for it has overhead inlet valves and side exhaust valves. These are operated hydraulically which makes for a very quiet engine.
Maintenance is reduced also, because obviously adjustment is taken up automatically.
The whole thing is constructed out of aluminium alloy reducing the front end weight of the car by some 90 lbs. T he weight distribution, in consequence, approaches that of works competition cars and improves the handling no end. In fact, during the road test we noticed a complete lack of the oversteer that usually plagues the 3000.The power from the 4-litre lump is, in the words of the famous Rolls Royce joke, adequate. The gear ratios are much more evenly spaced in the Jag box than they were in the MkIII and that big hole between second and third has vanished. Although the rear axle was described by Geoff Healey as a basic BMC unit it was apparently so chopped about that it might be better called a special one-off.