There’s something special about old Jags. There has to be - there aren’t many cars that you’d watch being winched onto a recovery truck at 1 o’clock in the morning, a few hours after buying it, and feel nothing but a warm sense of pride. Look at it up there on the ramp with a jump pack wedged under the bootlid, isn’t it just magnificent? In fact, while it sat, inoperable, directly outside my house for the next 7 days, I couldn’t help but smile every time I saw it. Who couldn’t?
The car in question was one of those eBay finds that just had to be bought immediately. I’d been on the lookout for an XJ40 for a while and had come close to a number of regrettable decisions involving suspiciously cheap cars in far flung parts of the country. What I eventually found, however, was something quite special. It was a 1994 XJ Sovereign with the 4.0 AJ6 straight six engine and Jade Green metallic paint, matched with flat aero alloy wheels. The interior was trimmed in oatmeal leather with sage green highlights on the dashboard; yes, it sounds like a vegan breakfast recipe but it looked amazing. The car had 107,000 miles on it and was being sold by an elderly gentleman who could no longer justify keeping it as a weekend toy. With a decent MOT and no major faults identified on the ad, I compulsively threw in a bid of £600 with only a couple of hours left on the auction. Imagine my delight when the auction finished at just £460 - a stunning bargain.
Being that it was a 5 hour drive away, the following weekend I took the train over to stay with a friend who lived about an hour’s drive away. The plan was to pick the car up on the Saturday, head back to my friend’s house to stay over and then drive my beautiful new Jag home to Devon on the Sunday - simple.
All went well, right up to the point I collected the car. Having met the chap at his house, we had a cup of tea and looked over the car. He showed me the issue it sometimes had with getting it out of park, but otherwise it seemed in generally good mechanical order. Aside from shabby paintwork and wonky bumpers, it didn’t seem bad at all and given the price, the fact it started, drove and was basically roadworthy was more than enough for me. I waved goodbye, made several attempts to get it to go into gear, backed out of his driveway and made my way across town to find a petrol station.
That short drive confirmed that it was, indeed, magnificent and I was already falling in love with it but it definitely had its issues. Aside from the lacquer which was missing from most of the bootlid, roof and bonnet thanks to years spent under a loose car cover, it also had a pronounced exhaust blow, giving it a moderately menacing tone, but it made the short trip to the petrol station with no major issues. It was a beautiful sunny winter’s day and I had a leisurely 80 mile drive to first base ahead of me in my gorgeous new Jag - what could possibly go wrong?
The car, as it turned out, had some answers to that. Years of doing tiny mileages and sitting around a lot meant the brakes were quite unhappy and getting it out on the open road for the first time in years quickly highlighted that they were binding badly. They brought the car to a stop in a straightforward enough manner but were clearly dragging and as they warmed up, they got worse. The car definitely wasn’t running quite 100% either, factors which all helped to explain why the trip computer was showing a less than amusing 11mpg. Home, which that morning had been a mere 300 miles away, was starting to look very, very distant.
It only got more distant as I left town and passed through a brand new industrial estate, where I noticed the voltmeter on the dashboard had dropped substantially. I knew what was coming and sure enough, a few minutes later, the engine stuttered into silence as I coasted into a mercifully quiet side road. I phoned Autoaid, who quickly send out a helpful chap in a Transit who confirmed that the alternator, whilst functioning enough to keep the battery warning light out, was only generating 11 volts. He phoned for a recovery truck while I phoned my friend to let him know the day’s plans had changed somewhat and I was going to have to go all the way home with the car that night.
What followed was a superbly well organised relay of four different recovery trucks, each of whom transported the stricken Jag a portion of the long way home, culminating in the final leg of the journey with a driver in his 70s and an Izuzu flatbed which, as we neared home at 2.30am, destroyed its propshaft bearing. We arrived at my home in a tremendous clatter of noise which no doubt endeared me to the neighbours, he unloaded the car and then went off to await his own recovery while I went inside to fall face first on my bed.
A week later, I fitted the Jag with a reconditioned alternator - fortunately a pretty straightforward job on these cars - jump started it and excitedly headed out on the road. Five minutes later I remembered; oh yes, the brakes. As soon as I could get it booked into my local garage it got treated to four stripped and cleaned calipers and shortly afterwards I also replaced the ancient spark plugs and crumbling ignition leads to bring back as much of the original 223BHP as possible.
A few gentle drives showed it to be much improved, although an unintentional but rather graceful 20mph powerslide on a damp roundabout also showed up that the elderly budget tyres on the back wheels were ill suited to the car and those swiftly got binned for a decent new pair of Toyos.
The next year was something of an emotional rollercoaster, as aged Jag ownership usually is. The car was, without a doubt, brilliant. It received positive comments from fellow drivers in traffic and passers-by (admittedly sometimes relating to the dreadful paintwork), never broke down and was generally just a superbly relaxing place to spend time.
It was impossible to get road rage in this car, being cut up just didn’t matter; I’m comfortable and cosseted in my old Jag, who cares what’s going on outside? Not that it was a casual performer - finding an empty Devon A-road, putting the gearbox into sport mode and making judicious use of kickdown meant the old lady could still entertain and certainly could get a move on, although best not to look at the fuel consumption readout while doing so. A friend borrowed it on numerous occasions and managed to get the readout down to 7MPG at one point.
The less relaxing part of the ownership experience was everything else one would generally expect with a sub-£500 luxury car. The brakes required substantial further work (XJs really, really don’t like being parked up), ABS warning lights came and went with wild abandon, the central locking had a mind of its own and arguments with it more than once resulted in the car winning and being left unlocked overnight on the street. The oil pressure gauge caused a minor coronary when it suddenly dropped to zero (they all do that, sir), the power steering occasionally came and went, the heater had to be manually operated under the bonnet and the cruise control buttons were for decoration only. Unsurprisingly, MOT time caused premature hair loss and wallet distress - and that was without the rust issues that often afflict the XJ40 - the usual rot-prone areas were immaculate with the exception of a patch on the bulkhead where later battery-in-boot models often go.
Despite all this, the AJ6 engine is actually pretty mechanically bulletproof and usually reliable, but the bits attached to it? Not so much. Earlier models with the digital dashboard tend to be even more recalcitrant - fortunately, being a very late one, mine had the standard and much more reliable dashboard.
I think what I loved about it more than anything else was the character and the conflicting elements that made it up. It was a high-end luxury saloon with a cheap plastic Ford key. It was reliable, but never worked properly. It threw tantrums, it put smiles on peoples faces, it was wonderful to drive and often painful to run. After another big repair bill I wanted to sell it; after driving it, I wanted to keep it forever. It looked stunning from a distance but had ruined paint and twisted bumpers.
Like all turbulent relationships, eventually it had to end and the car was sold before I’d even advertised it. I kept track of it for a while where it continued to provide its new owner with equal measures of delight and frustration, although I no longer know where it resides or what its fate is. Currently SORNed and out of MOT, it may still sit in a garage or under a tarpaulin somewhere, and who knows, if it ever resurfaces for sale, I might even consider having it back.
In general terms, the XJ40 has always been something of an oddity. Conceived incredibly slowly through the 1970s in the cash-strapped British Leyland era and eventually produced under Ford’s leadership in the 1980s, purists immediately disliked the boxy styling - a major departure after the sleek Series 3 - and in truth it was already dated from the day it was launched. The S3 continued for a long time afterwards in V12 form and was only replaced, somewhat bizarrely, in the final year of the XJ40’s production run.
The XJ40 always divided opinion and continues to do so now. It doesn’t have the technical capabilities of a 7 Series or S-Class or the bullet-proof engineering of an LS400 but as something to put a smile on your face, both behind the wheel and on your driveway, there’s nothing quite like an old Jag.