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I was 62 when I got mine. I must admit, I never had any kind of special affection for Jaguars in particular. I have always been more of a motorcycle buff and like engines of all types. By 62 my body had been telling me it was time to stop playing with dirt bikes and I thought I should get something with a nice V8 engine in it. As I looked around I saw the Jaguar XJS's with V12's with prices I could afford, and thought that would be really something. I started researching them and for me the 6 cylinders were never a consideration. I took the advice of buying the best you could afford to heart and got a wonderful 1986 V12 for $13.5K in 2020. Initially it was a car I looked past, becuase I thought I wanted some of the "bling" features of the later models, but now I am very happy with my car. One of the things I wanted it for was something I could tinker with and work on myself. When I first opened the bonnet I was quite overwhelmed, and it was very different from US cars. Over the last 4 years I have gotten quite comfortable with working on it, and as some have said here it is complex, but in a simple way if that makes any sense. I've done a lot of work myself now after initially having it inspected and initial work done by someone who knows these cars well. I've done all the fuel lines in the engine bay and the boot, plugs, wires, dist. cap. I've replaced the headliner, replaced all the shocks, the fan. Changed coolant and thermostats.
As time goes by my affection for this car has grown and everytime I drive it I am amazed at what wonderful cars these are.
I was 62 when I got mine. I must admit, I never had any kind of special affection for Jaguars in particular. I have always been more of a motorcycle buff and like engines of all types. By 62 my body had been telling me it was time to stop playing with dirt bikes and I thought I should get something with a nice V8 engine in it. As I looked around I saw the Jaguar XJS's with V12's with prices I could afford, and thought that would be really something. I started researching them and for me the 6 cylinders were never a consideration. I took the advice of buying the best you could afford to heart and got a wonderful 1986 V12 for $13.5K in 2020. Initially it was a car I looked past, becuase I thought I wanted some of the "bling" features of the later models, but now I am very happy with my car. One of the things I wanted it for was something I could tinker with and work on myself. When I first opened the bonnet I was quite overwhelmed, and it was very different from US cars. Over the last 4 years I have gotten quite comfortable with working on it, and as some have said here it is complex, but in a simple way if that makes any sense. I've done a lot of work myself now after initially having it inspected and initial work done by someone who knows these cars well. I've done all the fuel lines in the engine bay and the boot, plugs, wires, dist. cap. I've replaced the headliner, replaced all the shocks, the fan. Changed coolant and thermostats.
As time goes by my affection for this car has grown and everytime I drive it I am amazed at what wonderful cars these are.
Oh man she's a looker! What a sweet ride!!
Originally Posted by Mguar
Preference, I’m 99% German but I’m also frugal Working as a foreign car mechanic, it always shocked me the high prices I paid for German car parts. That and how often they’d be back in for some other serious issue.
Meanwhile I was racing my Jaguar in vintage sports car races. Blowing past the Mercedes and etc in my class. It shocked me how many times they’d fail to finish even one race.
Yet race after race, Year after year, decade after decade. The same Jaguar engine/ transmission, etc. just kept on winning. I litterly wore the paint off the car.
Due to lack of repair, I was able to keep racing that same car. With nothing more than normal race car maintenance.
The fantastic part was nearly all those parts were cheap discards found in Junkyards. Once the new wears off a Jaguar, prices go to the absolute basement.. Minor little flaws cause whole cars with low mileage to be junked.
Hey I'm from Germany! We're you born there? Do you live there? I don't think you have a location set.
I was 18 when I bought my 85’ XJS with 45,000 miles for $2,000 in the summer of 2022 and that one was cobalt blue. The same family had another 86’ XJS with 43,000 miles that was antelope metallic and was in rough shape from being kept outside under car covers. The kind woman that sold me the cars told me that her late husband was a GM engineer which explained how they afforded two of these beasts in back to back model years paid in full. I got all of the old guys documents including service records, diagrams and write ups on small block conversions, an XJS shop manual, a few magazines, and original sale booklet from the dealership. She also told me I could have the second antelope metallic car for free if I came back the next week, so that’s what I did.
I ended up selling the cobalt car last summer to a guy with similar ambitions to my own for the same price I bought it. I got the second car running from a dead state after cleaning out the fuel system and have been fixing her up piece by piece. Taken her out to a few car shows and gotten all sorts of looks even though her paint is rough and chipping away. I post here seeking safe advice regularly and appreciate everyone being so helpful. Lovely to be a part of this community.
I got my XJS in my late 20s, now mid 30s with two kids.
My plan was to get a useable MOT'd V12 that required no recommissioning, that I could enjoy as a 2nd car, and I always loved the look of the XJS. I think i'm of an age where I have absolutely no hangups about it being a 'poor replacement for the E-type' or similar, which I read a lot & honestly don't really get.
Alas things don't go to plan, little maintenance jobs escalate, before you know it you're removing all the subframes for complete overhaul, discovering rust, rebuilding the fuel system, flushing coolant crud out the engine block...then life gets in the way etc etc...kids, moving house, i'm sure a familiar picture. It's basically been off the road (albeit intermittently, so thankfully not just continuously sat) all this time.
Hindsight I would have probably been better off waiting until I was a bit older/had more money before buying it, so I could have either just bought a nicer example, or just handed it to a specialist along with a few thousand ŁŁŁ & said 'fix this', but where's the fun in that!
The good thing is it is now MOT'd & I do see light at the end of the tunnel to it being a nice well sorted usable car.
When you start to think about repairing that rust, remember this fact.
RUST NEVER SLEEPS.
24/7/365 rust is eating away at your metal.
It’s not hopeless. The easy affordable option is to come to America and buy a rust free ( never rusted) car. Primarily from the Southwestern part of the country, although I live in the rust belt and have several absolutely rust free Jaguars.
You’ll be able to buy non-running versions for far less than it will cost you to even DIY. Your own rust repair.
Bring them home, switch it from left hand drive to right hand drive ( all the holes parts and patterns are already there, manufactured for both right and left hand drive at the factory since more than 50% of Jaguars production came to America)
Not running, rent a shipping container and ship it home.
I'm 36 now, bought my 4.0 aged 32 after watching them come and go online for a while before. Just needed the spare cash, and finding somewhere to store a second car was also a limiting factor. When I first started looking at them in my mid-20s they could be had pretty cheaply but I wouldn't have been able to store one or look after it properly. I think the general ownership in the UK for this kind of thing is definitely at the more mature end, but I quite like being a (comparatively) young XJS driver. You definitely don't see many at the younger car scene events, where it's all German or Japanese stuff for the most part. I think for similar money something like an XJS is so much more interesting and characterful!
Bought mine 17 years ago with the first chunk of money I got out of the business I had just started, so early forties. Myself and my Dad had always loved the XJS and he got to see it before he passed away shortly after I bought it. It's a UK car that I exported to Ireland and was basically very solid. I mostly did the mechanical bits for the first 15 years of ownership but the bubbling paint on the windscreen scuttle always bugged me. During Covid I decided it was time to tidy up all the cosmetic stuff, windscreen scuttle rot, a couple of bits of rust at the bottom of each wing, re chroming bits of the bumpers, new headlining, refurbishing the leather, fixed the seized up wing mirrors and a few more bits. So pulled out the windscreen and went from this at the start of Covid;
To this when it was all finished. One last thing I need to do is get the AC working....but not a priority in the Irish weather!!
05-13-2024, 05:44 AM
