After 37 years of shaping the dynamic character of Jaguars, Land Rovers and Range Rovers, Mike Cross retired as JLR’s director of Vehicle Targets and Sign-off. We explore his Life & Cars -
s, and I was definitely into Fords. I had a succession of them. My first car was a Mk1 Escort 1100. After my A-levels I worked the summer installing industrial partitioning in a factory, which was a grim job but it paid well, and I bought this Escort. It was Daytona yellow and had a black vinyl roof and Rostyle wheels, and I thought it was the business. I mean, it clearly wasn’t, but I thought it was great.
‘You moved around the company doing lots of different jobs, which was a great way of learning about the business. Back then, particularly in engineering, the roles were much less specialised. As cars have got more complex and JLR has got bigger, people have much more closely defined roles than perhaps when I was starting out.’
Cross completed his studies and joined the ride and handling department at JRT. ‘This would have been ’84, I think. My boss was John Reid, who’s sadly no longer with us. I also met Rex Marvin whose son, Steve Marvin, subsequently went on to Renault Sport. Again, it was good broad experience because it was dampers, handling, ride, some tyre work. The XJ40 was just being finished off when I joined. The first programme I got involved with properly was the XJ-S Sport Pack.
At work, meanwhile, Cross had helped develop the XJ40 Sport Pack and found himself on his first launch, meeting the press. It was a baptism of fire. ‘My first experience was as a passenger for Leonard Setright. He seemed to have some sort of divine belief that somebody was looking after him; I remember some fairly optimistic overtakes and other stuff. The PR manager must have taken sympathy on me because I drove back with Sue Baker, an altogether calmer experience.
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