page_title: Jaguar Mark X
section_title: Body
hierarchical_section_title: Jaguar Mark X / Body
caption_attribution_description: 1963 Jaguar Mark X photographed at the 2008 Hudson British Car Show.
context_page_description: The Jaguar Mark X, later renamed the Jaguar 420G, was British manufacturer Jaguar's top-of-the-range saloon car for a decade, from 1961 to 1970. The large, luxurious Mark X succeeded the Mark IX as the company's top saloon model, and was primarily aimed at the United States market. The company hoped that the car would appeal to heads of state, diplomats and film stars.
  Introduced in the same year as Jaguar's iconic E-Type, the Mark X impressed with its technical specification and innovations. Contrary to its predecessors, the car featured integrated, unitary bodywork – the largest in the UK at the time, as well as independent rear suspension, unheard for early 1960s British luxury cars. Combined with the 3.8-litre, triple carburettor engine as fitted to the E-type, it gave Jaguar's flagship a top speed of 120 mph and capable handling at less than half the price of the contemporary Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.
  Despite press acclaim from both sides of the Atlantic, the Mark X never achieved its sales targets. When Jaguar decided to replace its entire saloon range with a single new model, the resulting XJ6 of 1968 used the Mark X as a template – albeit with a reduced size.
context_section_description: In 1961 the Mark X introduced a new upright, and slightly forward-leaning nose design for Jaguar saloons, with four headlamps set into rounded front fenders (derived from Daimler DK400), and a vaned grill. This front-end style reappeared on many of the manufacturer's successive saloons, up to and including the X‑Type and third generation Jaguar XJ, both through 2009 — thereby forging Jaguar saloons' look for almost half a century.
  Instead of relying on body-on-frame construction, like its predecessors and most of its competitors, the Mark X received a unitary body-shell, codenamed "Zenith" during its development. Its floorpan remained in production in elongated form, long after Mark X production ended, forming the basis of the Daimler DS420 Limousine until 1992. But at the same time, the interior was Jaguar's last to feature abundant standard woodwork, including the dashboard, escutcheons, window trim, a pair of large bookmatched fold out rear picnic tables, and a front seat pull-out picnic table stowed beneath the instrument cluster.
  Later, air conditioning and a sound-proof glass division between the front and rear seats were added as options. The substantial doors required helical torsion springs inside the door pillars to enable them to be opened from the inside with an acceptably low level of effort.
  From its introduction in mid-October 1961 until the arrival in 1992 of the low-slung XJ220, the Mark X stood as one of the widest production Jaguars ever built.  Asked in 1972 if he thought the Mark X had grown rather too large, Jaguar chairman William Lyons, agreed that it "definitely" had: he opined that the then recently introduced and notably more compact Jaguar XJ6 was, by contrast an "ideal size".
caption: 1963 Jaguar Mark X
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