24 Aug 04
Our man in New England: John with the 400bhp XJR
The air is getting thin, and the trees have disappeared. The clouds haven't, though; it's just that they are below us. We are floating in a heavenly world far above the tedium of the earth beneath, but our Jaguar XJR's wheels are still firmly on the ground. In a couple of minutes we'll be at the 6288ft summit of Mount Washington, highest peak of the White Mountains that cross the top half of New Hampshire in a swathe of the Appalachians.
That's New Hampshire in New England, an east-coast US state in which Chester sits next to Andover and Londonderry, and Durham is only slightly north of Exeter. It's bounded by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine to the east above a small section of NH coastline, and Canada to the north. There is as much history here as it's possible to have in the US, at least as far as those of Old World extraction are concerned; many came here from old England from the 17th century onwards, and we are here now.
And what better car to explore this small state, not much bigger than all of Yorkshire, than a Jagwah? The company that makes it might be American-owned, but as a car it's as Old English as a modern car can reasonably be. It doesn't look so very different from the original XJ6 of 1968, styled as it is in a mode so retro as to be indistinguishable at a glance from the outgoing range, but the body structure is all aluminium, the wheels have wide rubber bands for tyres and the engine is 400bhp of supercharged V8.
At least it would be 400bhp if it was running on European fuel, but in the US the best you can now get has an octane rating of just 93 (our standard unleaded is 95, super is 97). So some of those 400 horses may be put out to grass here, but the New England grass is very lush so they're probably not complaining. Besides, low-grade the fuel might be but it costs less than half as much as UK fuel, so who's complaining? The Americans, that's who - after recent price increases they think they are being ripped off majorly. As well they might, with all those vast SUVs and pick-ups to support.
