Jaguar XJ TDVI (X350) | Shed of the Week
Age is just a number - does the same sentiment apply to mileage?
Today's Shed is one of those cars that you could do a vox pop on, badgering old ladies in the High St into telling you how much they think it's worth. After they'd done marvelling at the Sovereign's Jaguar badge, its lustrous mica paint, its leather and wood cabin that remind them of their sitting room, and the thought of rolling up to the bingo hall in something so posh, the old dears would be guessing twenty grand all day long. Tell them the actual price of £1,995 and they'd either laugh, clobber you playfully with their handbags or keel over in a dead faint.
Go on then, what would you pay for this XJ Sov with (Shed thinks) one owner from new, a service history and an unthreatening MOT record? There will be many who will say 'nowt', that a diesel engine in a Jaguar is about as appropriate as a fox in a hen coop, and that no bargepole is long enough not to touch it with, but Shed will have none of that. Always a follower of anti-fashion, he happily paid peanuts for an S-Type with this same twin-turbo diesel motor and he loved every minute of it.
Talking of minutes, some will say that the likely lifespan of a cheap old Jag should be measured in minutes rather than the more usual years, but again Shed will reassure you on that front, especially if he's trying to sell you a diesel X350 like this one. Yes, the crank might explode, but surely the pleasure of XJ motoring more than makes up for that risk? All right, the compressor for the air suspension might conk out, but that just gives you more time to admire the beauty of nature while you're waiting for the recovery people. Yes, the electronics, including the sat nav, might not always be functioning perfectly, but isn't it time we re-learned some of our old skills like map-reading? And OK, the particulate filter might catch fire if you haven't had the software recall done, but surely that extra warmth would be a blessing now that winter is here?
The bodies of these XJs were made of aluminium. Many think that aluminium doesn't rust but all PHers know that it will, it just does it in its own special way, assisted in this cause by rivets made from steel that doesn't get on well with aluminium. In the case of this particular car, however, there is no sign of corrosion either visually or in the MOT history. As ever, the fuzziness of Shed's Amstrad screen isn't helping him, but the shortage of scrapes at each corner and the condition of the wheels (Shed has never been much of a wheel geek, but he is as sure as a doddery old git like him can be that these are off an XJR) suggests that this owner actually knew the width of the car and the environments it was passing through.
The good thing about aluminium, of course, is that it is light. Even with a heavy old V6 diesel lump under the bonnet this TDVi weighed just 1,650kg. With 204hp at 4,000rpm but more importantly 321lb ft at 1,900rpm, a diesel XJ will hustle along the highways and byways with a relaxed and yet deceptively rapid ease. The 0-60mph should come up in seven and a bit seconds, the top whack should be 140mph and the combined fuel consumption should be 35mpg, which with a near 19-gallon tank gives it a cruising range of well over 600 miles. The £430 annual vehicle duty in the UK is also refreshingly manageable at a time when cars that are no quicker and probably less economical in the real world than this Jag are being nailed for almost twice that.
The mileage of our XJ might seem high at 187,000, but over the last five years it's only done twenty thousand. As mentioned earlier, we are told it has a service history. Not how much, just that it has some. Looking at the car, Shed would be surprised if it wasn't full. The MOT runs out at the end of January with a fair-sized list of advisories at the last test, but none of it was worrisome.
Just as an aside, have you seen the prices for year-one (1968) Mk 1 XJs lately? No, neither has Shed because they're now as rare as Mrs Shed's smile. That's because most of them have long since moved on to the scrappers via a dustpan and brush. A reasonable-looking but almost certainly rotting steel 4.2 from the early 1970s will be at least £15k. One without rust, well, who knows how much that would be. You'll do well to find one of those outside of a museum.
Interesting parking spot for our Shed, next to a leany fence. Whenever Shed sees a car next to something that looks like it's about to fall over, it takes him back to a time many years ago when a mate borrowed his 3.0 Mk1 Capri for a couple of days. That was the plan, at least. Unfortunately it turned into a permanent sort of loan when the tree under which his mate had parked it decided it fancied a rest from all the standing up that trees are normally obliged to do. Shed often wonders how much that Capri would have been worth today. Thirty grand easy, he reckons. Of course, you would have had to spend forty grand on it to get it to that value, but that's not the point with old Fords is it?
If an S3 has a whiff of Arthur Daley or Terry Thomas, one of these feels like daily dramas or Terry and June...
Hammond did the same in a 3cyl diesel Polo & Captain Slow either run out of diesel or didn't quite get to Blackpool in a Subaru legacy.
The interior feels like it's from the decade preceding it's actual age though. An E60 for example must have looked and felt space age in period, I had both at the same time and they easily looked 20 years apart.
Not a bad car though and the metallic green they did is a fantastic colour when polished and in the sun.
I am a bit scared about higher mileage cars though for some daft reason, and I think it's mainly because I grew up in the early 70's when engines didn't seem to cope with high mileage back then in comparison to nowadays.
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