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Various "design studies" have been presented for a
possible successor to the Daimler DS420 limousine.
This page covers studies and speculations
that appeared during the production years of the DS420,
or shortly thereafter.
Cliff Ruddell worked in Jaguar's drawing office in the seventies and eighties. After the limousine assembly was brought to Browns Lane in 1979, Keith Cambage, the head of the limousine operations, requested many small body changes to the model. But no funds would be allocated to a large scale makeover. In 1983 Cliff spent some spare time sketching a few possible designs: starting from the existing body he first drew a new shape resembling the old design, and from there on he went to a modernised design, based on then current XJ40 technology. Shown with the sketches are Keith Cambage's handwritten comments (click to enlarge).
Cliff's website showing these sketches is at www.cliff-ruddell.co.uk. They are reproduced here in larger resolution with his kind permission. Cliff introduces these sketches on his website as follows: "the Daimler DS420 Limousine was a milestone design, when it was released in 1968. After the construction of a running prototype under Sir William's direction, the lion's share of the body design was completed by Jack Dunnett in Body Engineering".
The next drawing is his "artist's impression" of the new limo as a proud descendant of the Majestic Major DR450 and the DS420, with the three spires of the Coventry skyline in the background.
In Spring 2023 the magazine of the French Jaguar Drivers' Club published an extensive interview with Cliff, (in French language) with even more illustrations than we have on this page. I have added an English translation of the text pages.
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In 1985 the Autocar magazine (June 19, 1985) published a speculative article
(shown right)
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The same model was shown in the Jaguar Monthly and in The Driving Member magazines (see below for the full Driving Member article): |
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Still another design comes from the Coventry University Transport Design - Degree Show 2003. Note that it is not the same model as shown above! This illustration came with the following caption:
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The picture to the right is from Neil Bottrill, free lance designer in Manchester. Click on the image to see his design portfolio (2007) for a DS420 successor.
In January 2001, almost 10 years after the end of the DS420 production,
and some 8 years before Jaguar, under Ford ownership, stopped
using the Daimler marque (2009), Barry Pladdys,
the editor of the Driving Member magazine,
explained why in his opinion the Daimler marque had no commercial future
anymore. Re-entering the limousine market is an explicit part of his
observations. This article was published in the January 2001 issue.
Three month later, in April 2001, Tony Bagley, who is the liaison between Jaguar and the DLOC, published a reaction.