Jaguar Mk2 2.4 vs Ford Zodiac MkIII: 1960s spy thriller

By Martin Buckley

| 1 May 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Jaguar Mk2 2.4 vs Ford Zodiac MkIII: a taste of 1960s espionage

If it were possible to time-travel then The Ipcress File, the 1965 film that confirmed Michael Caine as a star, would make a fine commercial for a trip back to a perfectly preserved vision of mid-1960s London – a place seemingly populated by Cold War spies, men in bowler hats and villains driving 10-year-old Bentley Continentals.

In this, the first (and perhaps the best) of the Harry Palmer trilogy, the now Sir Michael plays the Cockney anti-Bond of Len Deighton’s books: a working-class secret agent in NHS spectacles, with a taste for the finer things in life.

He lives in then-grotty Notting Hill rather than Chelsea, and buys his tweed sports jackets off the peg from Lord John instead of Savile Row.

The Ford Zodiac MkIII’s tailfins – and Classic & Sports Car’s knock-off Michael Caine

Cheerful, egalitarian Palmer was a character more in tune with the changing times than the cruelly snobbish Bond, and the series worked because, unlike all the other spy films of the time, Harry Palmer was not even trying to take on Fleming’s super-suave hero – although they emanated from the same stable.

Harry Saltzman was the producer of both the 007 and Harry Palmer films.

The Ipcress File is memorable for its self-conscious set-up shots, great supporting cast, plot twists and a freshness that remains to this day.

It brings you up short to realise that, in a film dealing with a new world of high-tech espionage techniques, the British are still travelling around on the last of our steam trains.

The Ford Zodiac is more happy wafting than it is being hustled

There are no amazing sets or improbable super-villains.

The action is played out on the streets of London, in austere War Ministry offices, abandoned factories and bleak underground car parks; there is a great scene in the one at Hyde Park Corner, featuring a Mercedes-Benz 190 ambulance that I’d wager is the same car that appears in Thunderball, that year’s Bond film.

In Palmer’s world, agents don’t drive Aston Martins.

He is given a blue MkIII Ford Zodiac from the Ministry motor pool by Deighton’s equivalent of Miss Moneypenny (a char lady with a cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth) and drives it around rainy London, dreaming of the new infrared grill he’s going to buy with his extra £100 a year.

The Ford Zodiac MkIII’s cabin is more rock ’n’ roll than drawing room

This is the first time that we see Michael Caine behind the wheel on film (although at the time he didn’t even have a licence), and the Zodiac provides the main vehicular interest, but there are no car chases.

Along with the gold Mk2 Jaguar driven by Palmer’s colleague, Jock, it sets a mood of ordinariness in this stylishly shot thriller, which features perhaps the best of all John Barry’s soundtracks.

The £1200 2.4 Mk2 was the entry-level Jaguar saloon, with the smallest of the XK engines but all of the luxuries offered the bigger-engined 3.4- and 3.8-litre variants.

The Zodiac, meanwhile, was the ultimate English Ford: just under £1000-worth of glossy, mid-Atlantic plushness packaged within a most European concept of what a big car should be.

Forget Bond: if you want to experience 1960s espionage, you need to look to the Jaguar Mk2 2.4 (right) and the Ford Zodiac MkIII

The short-stroke, 120bhp 2.4 was the poor relation in that it was the only XK-engined Jaguar that was unable to achieve 100mph, which is why the factory never released one for an official road test.

Even with the big ends loosened to decrease friction – and despite ⅜in camshafts and a B-type cylinder head – the most they could coax out of it was 96mph.

The 2.4 was, in fact, part of the marque’s long tradition of smaller-engined saloons that goes back to the 1½-litre SS.

This example boasts only two owners from new, 61,000 miles and a beautifully preserved red-leather interior that has only recently emerged from beneath protective covers.

The Jaguar Mk2 2.4’s twin-cam, straight-six engine looks good and produces a cultured soundtrack

The Ford, too, is a timewarp offering, having been owned by one family until about 10 years ago, and it has collected a number of awards along the way.

Such cars have no problem finding new owners: this one had already been sold when we drove it.

Basing the MkIII around the monocoque architecture of the MkII Zodiac, Ford stylists – headed by Roy Brown from Detroit – managed to make the new car look like a more grown-up, sophisticated vehicle, although it was roughly the same size all round.

While the Zephyrs did service with the police and as RAF staff cars, plus other generic ‘big-car’ duties, the Zodiac was much more aspirational.

Indeed, Ford gave the Zodiac version of the MkIII a separate identity with its quad headlamps and a six-light version of the angular ‘Galaxie’ roofline, whereas the four- and six-cylinder Zephyrs had twin lights and full-width C-pillars.

The Ford Zodiac MkIII gave the 2553cc ‘six’ its last hurrah

Yet the overall shape – with its restrained fins and large areas of curved glazing – was more European than it had been previously.

Pietro Frua had been consulted early in the design process, and his influence could still be sensed.

It was a shape that lent itself particularly well to Abbott’s station-wagon conversion, the prettiest of all the substantial Ford estate cars.

The MkIII Zodiac was the marque’s first 100mph British model and the first large Ford with four speeds.

It was also the swansong for the 2.5-litre straight-six, which, with its higher compression, twin exhausts and bigger carburettor, gave 109bhp – 28% more power than before and an increase of 11bhp over the slightly more restricted Zephyr.

The Ford Zodiac’s cabin is lifted by its chrome details

It also gained the ‘Executive’ badge when a fully optioned automatic version was launched late in the model’s career in 1965 (as Ford began to market research the way it sold its big cars), although the featured example is a standard manual with the bench front seat.

The Zodiac is a big, friendly car to drive, soft but by no means American in its behaviour.

Its smoothness and torque, plus the sweet thrum from its six-cylinder engine, would have made anyone used to more humble Fords feel distinctly pampered.

Inside, there is a feeling of width and easy living on the sofa-like seats, although a glance behind reveals relatively little legroom, the space presumably having been sacrificed to the cavernous boot.

‘The fascination of the Ford is that it’s like a giant toy, appearing to teeter on its tiny wheels’

The atmosphere inside is cheerful and undemanding, with a simple fascia, a ribbon speedometer set in fake walnut, and minimal controls and warning lights, while the Jaguar has gauges that demand a certain level of interaction.

The Ford appears synthetic, idiot-proof and international in its style, with nothing to offend but nothing to delight, either, whereas few could easily dismiss the clubland charm of the Jaguar, with its glossy use of veneers and real leather that gives a feeling of wellbeing and decadence.

Considerable thought must have gone into making the gearchange of the Ford work so easily. It is light, precise and undemanding, with a useful amount of punch in third that will whisk the Zodiac up to 85mph if needs be.

The ton will come up within the mile if you feel inclined to use 5000rpm – which I didn’t.

The Jaguar 2.4 handles sweetly, but lacks the punch of the 3.4 or 3.8 Mk2s

The Ford is lighter than the Jaguar by nearly 400lb, so while the 2.4 feels pleasant enough when you are loafing around, the performance is not really there when you go looking for it, although it does make sophisticated and willing noises.

This beautifully preserved car has one of the better Moss gearboxes I have used, but the Zodiac’s full-synchromesh change is much more user-friendly.

I like the lazy, rather cinematic feel of the Ford as you go through the gears on its light, smooth clutch, but the truth is that both cars are very flexible, so there is little cause to change gear.

On the road the MkIII Zodiac, gaudy and insubstantial perhaps, feels just that bit more eager than the Jaguar.

Its handling is softer, its steering less precise than the Mk2, yet there is nothing basically wrong with its unassisted helm or the way in which understeer builds up gradually but considerably.

The Jaguar Mk2 2.4’s trendy wheel covers

An essential lack of rubber on the road can make rapid progress interesting in the Ford, whereas the hooligan element of the 3.4- and 3.8-litre manual Mk2s is sadly missed in the gentle-natured 2.4.

It has none of that urge in reserve that makes drifting and slewing these cars so irresistible.

So many years on, it seems the much more familiar of the two, and perhaps, for me, that’s its problem.

The reams of prose expended on these baby Jaguars has rendered them cliché-bound, a petrified vision of hell somewhere between Heartbeat and a charity-shop classic-car calendar.

Which is a bit unfair. It remains a masterful piece of styling that should have looked dated by the mid-’60s (the original 2.4 appeared in 1955, don’t forget) yet eschewed the fashions of the day simply by refusing to participate in them.

The Jaguar Mk2 2.4’s sumptuous interior is a throwback to the 1950s

Curvaceously bullet-nosed, it had its own visual language that only really referenced other Jaguars.

It looked, sounded and felt expensive, but wasn’t, and that was the genius of Sir William Lyons.

At the heart of its appeal was the twin-cam XK powerplant, a piece of machinery that was as visually seductive – with its proud, polished cam covers – as the Zodiac’s powerplant was anonymous and utilitarian.

Just your basic and unassuming generic straight-six, although highly receptive to tuning and favoured by AC.

If the Jaguar is a cliché, the Zodiac seems more like a piece of folksy nostalgia, a truer vision of the way we used to be.

The Jaguar Mk2 2.4 has an armrest for rear-seat passengers

The fascination of the Ford is that it’s like a giant toy, appearing to teeter on its tiny wheels with its body threatening to overwhelm them at any moment.

It looks impressive without being gross – like the MkIV range that supplanted it – and, unlike the Jaguar, I have a true recollection of these cars.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, there were still quite a few around, the preferred transport of the 10-bob millionaire or the ageing greaser living out his Eddie Cochran fantasies.

But their ranks thinned out rapidly as rust and banger-racing claimed them, despite the fact that, with 77,000 built between 1962 and ’65, the MkIII was one of the more popular big cars of its day.

The Jaguar Mk2 2.4’s tail-light cluster is larger than the Mk1’s

Perhaps Harry Palmer was assigned the Zodiac because he was subordinate to Jock, but had the gold Jaguar been a 2.4 (stand by with the ‘pause’ button on the remote control), the two cars would have been surprisingly close in perceived status – separated by about £200 and a lot less than you’d think in terms of all-round competence.

In 1965, anyone below the age of 40 would have thought themselves very lucky to be driving either of these executive status symbols, particularly a humble civil servant on £1400 a year plus allowances.

Images: James Mann

Thanks to: Robert Hughes Automobiles; Brooklands Museum

This was first in our June 2013 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication

Factfiles

Jaguar Mk2 2.4

Sold/number built 1959-’67/25,173
Construction steel monocoque
Engine iron-block, alloy-head, dohc 2483cc straight-six, twin Solex carburettors
Max power 120bhp @ 5750rpm
Max torque 144lb ft @ 2000rpm
Transmission four-speed manual with optional overdrive, RWD
Suspension: front independent, by wishbones, coil springs, anti-roll bar rear live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, radius arms; telescopic dampers f/r
Steering recirculating ball
Brakes discs
Length 15ft 1in (4597mm)
Width 5ft 6¾in (1695mm)
Height 4ft 9½in (1460mm)
Wheelbase 8ft 11in (2717mm)
Weight 3100lb (1406kg)
0-60mph 17.3 secs
Top speed 96mph
Mpg 18
Price new £1534 (1959)

Ford Zodiac MkIII

Sold/number built 1962-’66/77,709
Construction steel monocoque
Engine all-iron, ohv 2553cc straight-six, single Zenith carburettor
Max power 109bhp @ 4800rpm
Max torque 140lb ft @ 2400rpm
Transmission four-speed manual with optional overdrive, RWD
Suspension: front independent, by MacPherson struts, anti-roll bar rear live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, lever-arm dampers
Steering recirculating ball
Brakes discs front, drums rear
Length 15ft 2in (4622mm)
Width 5ft 9in (1752mm)
Height 4ft 9½in (1460mm)
Wheelbase 8ft 11¾in (2736mm)
Weight 2738lb (1241kg)
0-60mph 13.4 secs
Top speed 100mph
Mpg 19
Price new £1070