RE: Jaguar XJ220 - the inside story
Discussion
A local guy had one brand new back in the day, sounded like a right bag of spanners.Amazing looking thing though.The same man had a brand new 456gt, 1st week of ownership, took it to see his mate who owns a local restaurant on a busy high street, pulls up outside feeling the dogs bo!!ocks, forgets to check if anything is coming and an old dear test driving a metro takes the door clean off!!
He fecked off pretty sharpish, letting the recovery truck deal with it, priceless.
He fecked off pretty sharpish, letting the recovery truck deal with it, priceless.
vincegail said:
Are they that 'cheap' nowadays? I was about to recommend a 190.000 euros one for sale in Arnhem, NL, but apparently that is rather steap? Would have thought they would fetch a lot more money than 100k.
I had an idea they could be bought for £100k, but can't remember where that came from because it's clearly wrong! Here's some currently on sale in the UK:http://www.oakfields.com/html/showroom01Detail.asp...
http://www.oakfields.com/html/showroom01Detail.asp...
I know you'd have to be pretty brave and individual to take a punt on an XJ220 over something more modern, but if I had everything else I ever wanted and still had £159k spare, I think I could be persuaded to go for that blue one!
Off-topic time: Oakfields have some pretty unusual and rare machinery on sale, so their site is worth a browse:
http://www.oakfields.com/html/showroom01x.asp?offs...
A friend of a friend (I know!) apparently worked on the development XJ220.
He said he was in charge of the exhaust manifold engineering and had never done anything to do with exhausts before - let alone performance exhausts. He also mentioned that they did high speed testing out in the desert somewhere which had high speed banking. They were pretty blasé about the fact they were doing testing at 200mph+ but calculated that if the car was to leave the circuit at one banked pointed it would fly a couple of hundred meters
He said he was in charge of the exhaust manifold engineering and had never done anything to do with exhausts before - let alone performance exhausts. He also mentioned that they did high speed testing out in the desert somewhere which had high speed banking. They were pretty blasé about the fact they were doing testing at 200mph+ but calculated that if the car was to leave the circuit at one banked pointed it would fly a couple of hundred meters
BelfastBoy said:
Off-topic time: Oakfields have some pretty unusual and rare machinery on sale, so their site is worth a browse:
http://www.oakfields.com/html/showroom01x.asp?offs...
Duncan Hamilton has got a pretty special Porsche for sale too: http://www.duncanhamilton.com/porsche-962c-chassis...http://www.oakfields.com/html/showroom01x.asp?offs...
SteveO220 said:
The story about the 'spec changing' is another urban myth...when Jaguar asked for £50k deposits on its new V6, 550BHP, 2 wheel-drive supercar, it received 1,500 offers for the £360k car. Reason? At the time, this seemed a bargain. F40s were trading (second hand) for around £700k+. The economy was buoyant and money freely available. By the time of delivery 3 years later, the world had changed. Some buyers could not get the funds to complete their purchase and in any case, the overall market had crashed. F40s were by now trading for around £100k - a pretty catastrophic market decline. So some of these buyers tried to renege on their contracts by claiming the car did not have the V12 they were 'expecting' (even though their contracts clearly stated that it would be a V6!). I (coincidentally) know the lawyer who represented Jaguar at the time and they have said that it was a relatively straightforward case. Jaguar let the depositors buy themselves out of their contracts and then sold on the residual cars for around £210k I think. Not the perfect end, but not entirely catastrophic, given the economic circumstances.
It is indeed an amazing car, hand built by the team who were winning Le Mans at the time (TWR) and with the racing engine from the XJR10, easily capable of being tuned to 800BHP should you wish...plus it had Le Mans racing success in 1993 (we'll forget the phoney DQ). Very nice to look at and seems to make friends wherever it goes.
Yup. The contract detailed the spec of the build. It is indeed an amazing car, hand built by the team who were winning Le Mans at the time (TWR) and with the racing engine from the XJR10, easily capable of being tuned to 800BHP should you wish...plus it had Le Mans racing success in 1993 (we'll forget the phoney DQ). Very nice to look at and seems to make friends wherever it goes.
It was simply a case that prior to delivery the market crashed and no one wanted to pay £350k for someone suddenly worth well under £100k.
Just like we saw with the off plan deposits on new build flats when that market crashed.
Some people didn't have the money due to the crash but most just wanted to get out of paying an additional £300k for something that suddenly wasn't worth more than the deposit they had down.
I recall about 10 years ago being told that Jaguar were selling off the last half dozen or so.
The advice that I was given was to turn up to the meeting, choose a colour and then write a cheque out for substantially less than the £120k they were privately asking for and sit back and watch that cheque be cashed an the 220 handed over.
It was extremely tempting but it just wasn't a car I could use the way I use my cars. It was a bargain for a collector rather than a user. If I recall correctly, a set of tyres back then were the price of a modest hatchback and I wasn't exactly excited at the idea of using Drunken Duncan's for servicing.
I regret it but I was too young and it just wasn't suitable.
m9fdb said:
If the lotto come my way I would love one but I bet they are really dated inside now and feel like a trip back the the early 90's
Well...its an early 90s car. I haven't changed the interior of the E-type, as it is a 60s car, it's what it is.When you buy one I think you approach it as a classic/icon/collector rather than an 'instead of' over a modern supercar
Funpotato said:
I remember getting a 1:24 scale model in silver as a very small child. Was my favourite car in the world until I discovered the E-Type. Played with it until its wheels snapped off. Still kept all the parts though. Chuffing marvelous car.
Welcome first poster - great username too!One of my all time favourite cars. I got to have a look at one in person at the Imperial Palace car collection in Las Vegas earlier this year. It's a big car, but not gargantuan, but something about it just looks so right. It's like everything on the car is a piece of functional art, and not in the gaudy way you see with some hypercars these days. The interior is probably my favourite of any car.
Actually, this might be my favourite car ever.
Actually, this might be my favourite car ever.
Funpotato said:
I remember getting a 1:24 scale model in silver as a very small child. Was my favourite car in the world until I discovered the E-Type. Played with it until its wheels snapped off. Still kept all the parts though. Chuffing marvelous car.
I had a model of one in blue as a kid, which i still have. When i bought my XJ220 i got one identical to the model. They're very underrated cars but it seems people are cottoning on as prices are definitely on the way up and I see fewer for sale than a year or two ago. We managed to get 11 cars together at a gathering earlier this year, great to see some of the current owners actually out and about driving them!I live on a boring housing estate with a smattering of hot hatches and a few nice Jags (lots of Jag employees on my estate), I heard an almighty rumble earlier this week, looked out and there was a green XJ220 driving down the side road, it was gone before i could get my camera.
Forgot how wide these cars were. Watched one drive around silverstone many years ago, just epic cars.
Forgot how wide these cars were. Watched one drive around silverstone many years ago, just epic cars.
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