When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Dear friends:
My XJS 4.0 was built in 1995, and I am not sure if it is a Celebration edition. I see certain things that lead me to think so, like the hand brake covered in leather, but there are other things that Celebrations do have and mine does not have.
Thanks in advance for your help
As Vee says, your seats are the slightly earlier ones and also you have the wood trim around the major instruments, which was deleted for the Celebration cars. However, you do have what seems to be a Celebration gearknob. And you do have a 1/2 wood and leather wheel although the wood colour seems much darker than expected.
ALL XJS after VIN 221855 are Celebration model. I don't know, but I suspect that your car has a VIN between 194774 (intro of AJ16 engine and those integral headrest seats) and 221854 (last car before Celebration), and the wheel and gearknob have been added on later.
Thank you both for your answers.
PTJS1, the wooden wheel and the wooden gearknob were added by me. What confused me was the hand brake lever covered with leather, because I have seen this feature in all the Celebration models, and I never saw it in a non Celebration XJS. Perhaps the prior owner of my car added it?
I THINK your handbrake gaiter might have been added later. I have a 196xxx series car which was manufactured in July 1994 and don't have a gaiter. I'm not sure if the gaiter was fitted as standard before VIN 221855?
I've also added a trip computer, to mine. Yours could have had it added by a previous owner or perhaps it was specced as an extra from new? I've also added one of the quite rare gearknobs that were used for a very short time on the Jaguar XKR-S. A personal opinion but I think it quite suits it! One day, I'll also get around to fitting my US-spec wood & leather wheel at the same time as I fit the rare official Jaguar cruise control kit that I've owned for over 10 years!
I've always been ill-informed and confused on the details of the later model XJS. Have you ever thought of bashing out a sort of "quick reference" guide covering the key features and changes of the face-lift cars and when they occurred by VIN break and/or time? It needn't be anything fancy.
For example, VIN breaks for outboard brakes, body colored bumpers, etc.
Thank you all very much for your answers.
I am the second owner, and I know for sure that the trip computer was in this car from the very beginning, as well as the leather gaiter in the hand brake. I did not even know about the wood in the gauges panel, but now that I pay attention to such detail, all the Celebrations I see on the internet do NOT have wood there. Perhaps the best way to get out of doubts is to check the chassis number.
Thank you Paul for teaching me the word "gaiter". That is a word in English I did not know
I checked the chassis number of my XJS and the final numbers are 199370, so Paul is right. It is not a Celebration.
Honestly it is not so important because I love the car the way it is and I do not like the alloy wheels the Celebrations came with. It was just a doubt that I wanted to clarify, and I truly thank you all for your advice.
When I looked for my car many years ago I wanted a 4 litre with an AJ16 engine. In the UK, those first AJ16 cars had body-coloured mirrors and headlamp surrounds which I really liked. (In the US, they swapped it around and gave that spec to 6 litre cars for some marketing reason?) So after 9 months I found the car I wanted in Sapphire Blue with Cream interior. (Yours also looks like Sapphire?)
The good thing about your car is that you have the revised vented rear discs and later ABS system that came in at VIN 198335, so a great spec!
Jaguar had strange market XJS specs between 93 and 95 with the US getting integral headrest seats earlier than the rest of the world for some reason. Then at VIN 194774 with the intro of the AJ16 engine, the US got the body-coloured sport spec on the 6 litre rather than the 4 litre. Again, presumably a marketing issue?
Once the final Celebration cars were introduced at 221855, things were much more standardised across the world, apart from the usual emissions junk on the US cars.
For a car that wasn't even supposed to exist in the 90s, it didnt do too bad!
Dear Paul
Mine is also blue like yours. My initial favorite was green with cream color top, but I ended up with this blue model that with time has become my favorite. In the end, I do not care much if it is or not a Celebration, because I was extremely fortunate to find this unit with just 60.000 km, a very reasonable price and a well reported history of proper maintenance. I feel privileged to own this awesome machine that runs like a Swiss watch, and I do give her the care she deserves.
Paul, yours has painted headlight rims (which I believe really cleans up the front looks) and painted mirrors, both of which would indicate a V12 car in the US, but in which case it would be missing the US V12 cars’ painted front grille (color of the car and not black) and that beautiful rear spoiler. I really like how the painted headlight moldings freshen up the front of your XJS. In fact, that’s one of the changes that I’ve done myself to my ’94 XJS, however, after I did that I realized that the connecting chrome strip between the headlights at the front edge of the bonnet needed to be matched to the headlights, which is what they did with the superb looking XJR-s cars in matte black color until 1993. So I painted that molding, as well but, clearly, that’s not the only thing that I have changed to the front.. This is what mine looks like.
I see both of you guys’ cars show front fog lights, which I don’t think I’ve seen on US cars after the 1993 MY. Are yours after market additions, or were fog lights an XJS standard until the end (1996) in the UK? So well, ’94 US cars did not come with fog lights, so I rather chose more modern Hella projector lights that fit perfectly down there; they're blue OFF, amber ON.
The only interior Celebration item on my far-from-Celebration ’94 car is the steering wheel, which I purchased from the local Jag dealer the day after I purchased the car in 2000. It was supposed to be a “1996 XJS” steering wheel that looked and felt like a great improvement - My shifter knob is wooden, but it is not necessarily a Celebration knob, but…maybe only better because it is a very special hand made knob with a green growler at the top, (made by…the best in Florida…?). BTW, 1994 was the last MY when all XJS cars came with a trip computer. Trip computer for the ’95 cars came only with the V12 engine or, perhaps, with special request for one. In 1996 there was a very limited number of XJS cars with a V12, so probably hardly any 1996 trip computers.
A "1996 XJS" steering wheel from local Jag dealer This knob is so special..... it always places a smile on my face
Sometimes I still wish that I had purchased this car, back in 2000: A 1996 Sapphire blue XJS with 11,000 miles, owned by a very rich young couple from Milan, Italy. They were selling it because they had two cars in the garage of a special house they owned, actually not too far north of where I live (So Cal) and they used the house just a couple of weeks a year. The other car was a new Lamborghini, so they were keeping that and selling the XJS. But hear this... they had two cars in the garage of each of about 10 properties around the world, California, Dallas, Aspen CO, New York, Paris, Lake Como, etc. I actually test drove the car but, $45,000 was not what I was ready to spend back then, unfortunately.
11-30-2020, 11:10 AM
Is it a Celebration
