Anyone owned a Jaguar XJ late 60s

[ptitterington]

A guy has been offering this for sale for ages, would take around £750 was wondering what they were like.


http://jerseyinsight.com/classified_1.a ... d=2:267446

[chickenjohn]

A friend of mine owned one in the 1980's. The car must have been nearly 20 years old, it was in good nick apart from rust on the rear wheelarches.

He let me have a drive of it, and it was quite an experience. My car was an Allegro 1100 at the time (yes, I know! ) and driving the Jag after the all aggro was like being in a different world as far as motoring was concerned. The Jag had an unbelievably smooth ride, yet cornered flat and the power from the 4.2L straight six on kickdown was quite something! Very comfortable and fast car for it's day.

Here is a buying guide. http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/buyers_guide_xj.htm

I would advise joining one of the Jaguar clubs, or at least scouring the club forums for buying advice. I guess parts will be expensive compared to a Minor, ditto fuel consumption and there is a lot more car to go rusty and need welding up!

Having said that I would consider buying one, having driven one years ago.

[8009STEVE]

Check the sills for rust. has it been used for towing? if so the rear floor need ckecking. if you do get a jag, then no.1 cylinder is at the back

[PSL184]

Beautiful cars!

I had a series 2 and loved it...
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...and an XJ40 too
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[linearaudio]

If it looks sound and starts without smoking then it would be worth £750 any day just for the privilege of owning that engine!
Should be a sound investment, if I had the room I would get one tomorrow, doesn't matter how much fuel she uses at that sort of price!

[StaffsMoggie]

The Series 1 XJ6, like that one, was the best car that Jaguar ever made. It was right from day one. The Series 2 and 3 cars were nowhere near as nice.

I had a Series 1 Daimler Sovereign 4.2 and still regret selling it 20 years later.

Front crossmember, sills, rear trailing arm mounts, rear subframe mounts are a few places to look. Mechanical repairs are straightforward enough.

[chickenjohn]

Yes, I heard that these cars were much better made than the 70's Jaguars because the BL disease of poor quality hadn't yet set in. Much like the Minor is a far better designed car, and better built car than the BL crap that replaced it (Marina and Allegro, for instance).

Chcek VERY carefully for rust and mechanical problems, other than that, if it runs well and has an MOT £750 is not a lot of money so such a lot of great car!

[ptitterington]

I went and had a quick look this morning, It is rusty underneath but dose not have any holes right through. I would say overall it if quite tatty especially the interior, It also has a box of bits on the back seat, not sure if it is bits that have fallen off.

I think I will give it a miss as It looks like it could be a money pit. But it is a good looking car.

[mike.perry]

A bit later but I owned a 1983 Series 111 XJ6 Daimler Sovereign in pale metallic blue and with the flat chrome hubcaps before the pepperpot alloys. It was a beautiful car to look at with the Daimler fluted grill and was a relaxing car to drive ensconsed in the deep cream leather seats looking at the classically laid out dials and chrome flick switches. It just floated over road humps.
However it nearly bankrupted me. I would cruise along the motorway watching the fuel gauge for the left hand 10 gallon tank visibly drop before my eyes before changing tanks and watching the gauge repeat itself with the right hand tank. Nearly every time I drove it something would fall off, the electrics had a mind of their own, the windows would open or close if they felt like it and it had a nasty habit of activating the central locking whilst I was outside the car with the keys in the ignition, I soon learnt to carry a spare set.
The bodywork was all you would expect from a 70s - 80s British Leyland car, it rusted on every conceivable panel, panels which you could leave unpainted for twenty years on a Morris Minor.
And finally there were the clouds of smoke which billowed from the twin exhausts and which required a minature oil well to keep the sump topped up
Definately a car for polishing in the driveway on a Sunday morning (sorry any churchgoers) and driving gently to classic car shows

[ethanehunt]

I could bore you all with the long story of how I ended up in the check-cashing business — it involved an attack with a broomstick and a coffee mug — but instead we will simply join the action in medias res some time in 1996. I am standing on the used-car lot outside Welsh Enterprises choosing my XJ6. Bill Welsh, the owner, had just treated me to lunch at “Jaggin’ Around”, the restaurant he owned in Steubenville, Ohio. A millionaire several times over from his intelligent decision to purchase some sixty-odd E-Types for pennies on the dollar in the Seventies and resell them at top whack in the Eighties, he was cheerfully burning his afternoon as I drifted among no fewer than six solid-condition Series III Jags, none priced above $4995. Clearly, this was more about amusement than money.

Upon its introduction in 1968, the Jaguar XJ6 was almost certainly the best sedan in the world. It was fast and smooth thanks to its big straight-six, as comfortable as a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow (if not nearly as tall and syrupy) and gorgeous beyond dispute. It was also an utterly terrible, completely unreliable automobile. The absorption of Jaguar into British Leyland and the succeeding “Series II” model didn’t help matter. Series II XJ6s are utterly hopeless. My neighbor at the time owned one and wanted to sell it to me for four grand. I asked the USENET Jaguar group and was told to go see Bill Welsh for a decent XJ6, so I did just that.

As Welsh and I walked through the labyrinthine old brick buildings which comprised his loosely assembled enterprise, we kept coming upon Series III XJ6es, parked nose-first against a wall under a stack of boxes or peeking out from beneath rotting old car covers. When Jaguar returned to private ownership under John Egan, he demanded that the quality of the Pininfarina-restyled Series III be brought up to par. It mostly was, although as previously discussed, my father’s ’86 XJ6 was notoriously unreliable. This did not stop me from wanting one of my own.

Although I was smitten by a grey base XJ6 with red leather interior, my favorite of Welsh’s cat herd was an ’85 Vanden Plas in champagne with cream interior. It was $3995. The “Vanden Plas” badge was a curious artifact of Jaguar’s US branding. In England, upscale XJ6es were sold as “Daimler Sixes” since Jaguar owned the “Daimler” brand there. (The story of Daimler and Jaguar is a fascinating story of its own.) Jaguar could not badge the car as a “Daimler” in the United States so they used “Vanden Plas”, the name of a Belgian coachmaker, to denote the full-equipment cars.

Compared to a regular XJ6, the Vanden Plas had Connolly Autolux leather in a quad-seat arrangement. The interior wood was burled walnut rather than standard walnut. Most options were standard, and a set of fleecy floormats were provided as well. My car also had real Jaguar wire wheels. Those wheels were, ironically, made by the Dayton Wire Wheel Company. That’s right, Jaguar had thrown some “Ds” on it.

[Alec]

Hello Ethanehunt,

as a point of interest, BMC (which later became part of BLMC, i.e. Leyland) owned the Van Den Plas label and made a version of the Austin Westminster labelled Van Den Plas Princess, which also had a 4 litre Rolls Royce engine in place of the 3 litre Austin engine the base model had.

Alec

[Dean]

To continue the Vanden Plas story, Jaguar used to badge the US Daimler cars VDP right up to MG-Rover's administration. Apparently Jaguar used to lease the name until the receivers sold it, I'm not sure who bought it.. perhaps the Chinese.

[rayofleamington]

Very comfortable and fast car for it's day.

Rather like the current production XJ! It's by far one of the best they've done but exec's still think about German machinery
Yes the front is overly similar to the XF but as soon as you get in it the similarities stop - it's awesome.
Weighing in at less than it's little brother it goes like stink and drinks less juice as well (most efficient in its sector etc..). Much nicer than your soul-less Audi equivalent IMHO.

As for early Jags and XJ40's - I've never really had the bug*. Had an XJ40 on my drive for a while (maybe 5 months - my memory is poor) but couldn't face fixing it all the way to an MOT (complex repair to do suspension bushes) so it got sold. Arches were all good but floor needed a plate next to passenger B-post. ABS hydraulic unit was faulty but you could get rid of the warning light with a suitably placed resistor in the connector

*Cars & bugs - don't knock it till you've tried it. If we all believed what we heard I wouldn't have a Trabi or a Marina - both of which are much better than people say.