The Jaguar engineer with a passion for Porsche

Watching Mike Cross roll into the Caffeine&Machine car park in a 911 GT3 is a little like spotting Harry Kane in the wrong colours.
 
For years, ‘Crossy’ was Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) vehicle targets and sign-off director. His more recent career saw him fine-tune the all-electric I-PACE, the new Land Rover Defender and the 911-rivalling Jaguar F-type among many others. He was also a regular in car magazines, often demonstrating new JLR models a month or two before journalists were allowed to drive them. Seeing him behind the wheel of the benchmark German sports car does feel a little odd.
 
But after almost four decades of unbroken service – first at Jaguar, then JLR – Cross retired on 28 February 2022. I attended his official send-off, where he revealed he’d bought a new Land Rover Defender V8 and was looking forward to the coming trackday season with his VW Transporter and small collection of motorbikes. But he also had a new 992.1 Carrera GTS on order. He had benchmarked 911s previously at JLR and had always admired them, and now he wanted to own one himself.
 
“What’s always impressed me with 911s is the amount of refinement and usability you get for the level of dynamic ability. The primary ride quality has always been good, even if the secondary ride can sometimes be a little harsh,” comments the Club member. “I really enjoyed the extra precision of the GT3 when I tried a new 991.1 model too.”
 


He also rates Porsche’s GT product boss Andreas Preuninger and enjoyed a discussion set up for one particularly memorable Autocar feature. “Andreas seemed like a proper engineer and is obviously passionate about the product,” Cross comments. “We shared a lot in common about developing young engineers and we were both really pro dual-clutch gearboxes.”
 
In fact, a year or so after he took delivery of his 992 GTS, Cross traded up to the car Preuninger was working on when the two met in 2019 – the 992 generation GT3, which Porsche introduced in 2021.
 
Finished in Arctic Grey, that’s the car Cross arrives in today. He parks up, orders a coffee and sits down to discuss why he sold the GTS and to share his professional opinion on the latest GT3 – and particularly how it fares on the challenging B-roads he once used to develop Jaguar Land Rovers.
 
Before that, though, a little context. Cross joined Jaguar full-time in 1984, but the first models he influenced from inception were the X308-generation XJ and XK8 of the mid-to-late 1990s.


 
“Back then, Jaguars were limousines, really, quite focussed on the US,” he remembers. “It wasn't solely me, but we started to make them more dynamic, harking back to the 1960s and 1970s.”
 
When Ford bought Jaguar in 1999, engineering boss Richard Parry-Jones and three-times F1 world champion (and Ford consultant) Sir Jackie Stewart mentored Cross. In fact, Stewart once described Cross as the best driver outside motor racing – quite the compliment given that the chassis engineer had tested a Jaguar Formula 1 car.
 
Cross’s initial focus on ride and handling soon expanded into integrating all systems, from NVH to powertrain calibration to brake feel. “My job was to ensure all attributes worked together harmoniously,” he recalls. “I also began to work with sales and marketing, helping to define what the cars should be in the first place, to be consistent with brand DNA.”
 
Following Ford’s purchase of Land Rover in 2000, Cross’s role grew to “guiding the development of both brands’ cars, evaluating them from a critical customer point of view, then signing them off when they were ready to pass through bigger programmes.”
 
His last development programme was today’s L461 Range Rover Sport, before retirement and the 992 GTS beckoned. COVID-19 bottlenecks meant Cross faced an understandable delay in getting his hands on his first 911, but the dealership experience did leave a little to be desired.

 
“I’ve only bought one new premium car in my life and it wasn’t quite the special experience I expected,” reveals Cross. “We were coming out of lockdown and maybe they could sell all the cars they could get, so perhaps that played a part.”
 
Cross did, however, very much enjoy his day at Porsche Experience Centre Silverstone that came as part of the package, and largely enjoyed the GTS.
 
“In normal driving, the GTS is probably faster than the GT3, partly because it’s got so much torque and partly because it’s probably more exploitable on a bumpy, wet B-road,” he says. “It also uses less fuel and is easier day-to-day so, from a purely objective point of view, you could argue it’s better overall. But it didn’t quite have the sense of occasion I wanted in typical driving and wouldn’t really wake up until you were going very quickly indeed. I wanted something with more of an edge.”
 
So, in January 2024, Cross traded his GTS for the GT3. Ordered from the factory in a more road-oriented specification and showing just over 3,000 miles when purchased, it’s reasonable to assume it wasn’t quite comfortable enough for its first custodian, who swapped it for a Bentley. For Cross, though, it’s nearly perfect.


 
I jump in the passenger seat and we set off on a test loop familiar to Cross from his vehicle sign-off days as he tells me more about the spec.
 
“This car is probably as close to a Touring as you can get but with a rear wing,” he explains. “It’s got front-axle lift, no rear roll-cage, no bucket seats and no carbon-ceramic brakes. That’s perfect for me because I plan on doing road trips rather than trackdays, plus Tourings were advertised for £30-40k more. I’ve also come to like the rear wing after initially not wanting one – it’s a GT3, after all.”
 
Optional equipment includes 18-way sports seats (the new owner isn’t completely sold on the contrast Shark Blue stitching), the Sport Chrono package, dynamic LED headlights and Bose surround sound. It’s a nice spec.
 
For Cross, the PDK transmission was also a must. “The shifts are so fast and, with these cars, you don’t really want to take your hands off the steering wheel,” he smiles. “The gearbox can be a little clunky when it’s cold – there’s quite a lot of lag, so you put some revs on them and suddenly they take off – but, when it’s warm, it’s fantastic.”



We flow quickly but safely over a network of country roads, Cross rarely moving his hands from the quarter-to-three position, clicking through gears manually on the paddles and guiding his GT3 through turns with delicate if confident inputs. With the engine singing and the 911 beautifully balanced as Cross coaxes it smoothly along, it’s clear the West Midlands native is on home turf.
 
While JLR would develop cars everywhere from the simulator to German autoroutes, test routes local to JLR’s Gaydon base in Warwickshire were the chassis engineer’s go-to – not just because they were conveniently local, but because they were almost uniquely challenging with their combination of tricky cambers, compressions and corners.
 
“We were looking for challenging roads to develop steering and ride,” Cross reveals. “If a road is quite narrow, like these are, it forces you to stay in your lane and think about how intuitive the steering is. Plus roads around here put some nice vertical loads into the chassis.”
 
Here, Cross thinks, the benefits of the GT3’s double-wishbone suspension (versus MacPherson struts for the GTS and other 911s) come to the fore, even if they are somewhat nuanced. “Steering has always been my favourite attribute and the GT3’s has a real immediacy to it. I think it’s maybe 10 per cent better with the double wishbones; it just has a really nice stiffness,” he sums up. “It can feel a bit too responsive on bumpy roads but, on smoother roads, it’s just brilliant. I do wish the car wasn’t quite so wide overall, though.”



Another section of our test loop runs mostly flat on a road over open farmland, where the GT3’s taut suspension never quite settles, in stark contrast to the firm if compliant feel of just a few miles before.
 
When I ask Cross how he’d tweak the suspension if he were developing the car, he notes the sometimes-restless secondary ride and suggests he might experiment with “letting the car go a bit more”, giving it a little more suspension travel to breathe with the road. But while he doesn’t actually plan to modify his car’s hardware, he is tempted to adjust the factory geometry settings.
 
“I’ve thought about experimenting with the alignment for a better compromise on bumpy roads. It can fidget and get a bit nervous in the wet,” he notes. “Matt O’Hara at Spires Tuning used to work with me at JLR and tweaked the GTS geometry to make the steering more immediate. Matt moved it to the least amount of toe-in within the factory tolerance, which just woke up the steering a bit. I might go the other way with the GT3, but I wouldn’t want to do that at the expense of immediacy.”
 
It’s worth bearing in mind that Cross made his name sweating subtle details that are often lost on less sensitive drivers and, as we pull back into the Caffeine&Machine car park, he declares himself very much impressed with the GT3. “The steering is magnificent, the transmission is calibrated really nicely and I particularly like the naturally aspirated engine. This car is properly quick when you’re on it, even if the GTS could feel faster in normal driving,” he enthuses. “I can’t see myself selling it any time soon.”


 
Given that Cross spent an entire career signing off some of the 911’s most highly rated rivals, the F-type included, that’s high praise indeed.

This feature was written by Ben Barry and first appeared in the November issue of our monthly Club magazine, Porsche Post. Join today to receive your first copy in the New Year as well as enjoying a host of exclusive member benefits and savings.