A cheap Jag XJS - Am I barmy?

[LewG]

I would say that yes they are still in your budget, but if you are going to buy then buy now. I bought mine for under 3k around 2 years ago and it was a pretty good example to start with. I could've spent perhaps £500 addressing small issues and just driven it. But me being me I couldn't stay away from the spanners and ended up spending a fair bit on it! As 300bhp has said don't discount the XJ40, they are absolutely superb cars. My best mate has a 4 litre that he bought for 500 quid with intergalactic mileage on, and no joke even now the ride and level of refinement is absolutely amazing. You just float along the road cocooned in leather and silence, watching the world go by. It's a fantastic thing.

[iSore]

I bought my first XJS in 1988 when I was cough******20 something*****cough.

Really, it was a disaster. it was 10 years old, as rotten as a carrot and needed £2000 of bodywork - new wings, sills, valances and the rest of it. They weren't quite old enough then for the inevitable fked front crossmember but the rear trailing arms were about to break - fought in time and replaced with new ones. Then the gearbox shat itself, the a/c stopped working and I found out very quickly that 'jag specialists' were cowboys only without the Roy Rogers outfit. It was a fabulous car, but also a badly made pile of st and despite promises made, later ones were equally grim. It was only when Ford went in and started waving a big stick that quality improved to a semi-reasonable level.


Very few eighties cars rot like an XJS.

I would personally steer clear of the older stuff and look four a 1992 onwards 4.0. The facelift was something of a cow's arse but the car itself was a lot better and the chances of the rear axle falling out are much reduced.