SOTW: Jaguar XJ6
Discussion
I couldnt help but share a pic here. I've had 4 XJ's. 2x 4.2 S3's, a late XJ40 3.2 Gold and this X300 3.2 Exec with XJR6 wheels that I bought just to smoke after selling my Rangie while looking for a really mint 944 and just could not bring myself to sell even when the '44 arrived. Le mans and back faultlessly and averaged 22mpg fully loaded, waft heaven.
Have unsurprisingly found the later cars to have less gremlins that the S3's but even they were not bad at all, running all of them alongside either an 80's 911 or 944 of some vintage they do not stand out as more expensive to spanner, the opposite in fact in the case of one particular 911SC.
Reading this makes me want to sell the 944 and the Exec, bite the bullet and seek out that ultra rare manual XJR-6 or X300 V12 (somehow never fancied a Daimler Double Six, must be the Jag)....as a few people have said already, Waftfeaver is incurable!
Used to have a 97 xj6 4.0 sport. The last of straight six engines. British racing green, magnolia leather, was a thing of beauty. You only realised how fast these cars were when you look in the rearview mirror... Every time I see one I am sorely tempted.. No breakdowns or even niggles in 2 years at 130k. Bullet proof and so much nicer than friends BMWs.
Big Fat Fatty said:
I must say though they're not as big as some of you have suggested, I've seen these things dwarfed by modern Focus' and the like in car parks.
Try parking it in the spaces left by average cars! They are low, with pinched-in style front and rear, this does a brilliant job at hiding the size. Yes you can't see them in a car park, until you look along the row and see its back end it sticking out a foot past nearly everything else. The standard wheel base version is just short of sixteen and a half feet long. And looks absolutely fantastic of course - most modern cars look like ungainly fat blobs in comparison.
A car from the days when a designer would scribble it out on the back of an envelope, and it just looked right from the off. Got to be in my top 10 for looks. Still not dated really. Much better than a lot of the ugly abortions on the road today 'designed' by CAD..................!!!
robinessex said:
A car from the days when a designer would scribble it out on the back of an envelope, and it just looked right from the off. Got to be in my top 10 for looks. Still not dated really. Much better than a lot of the ugly abortions on the road today 'designed' by CAD..................!!!
Properly styled, and in my eyes still looks surprisingly fresh and instantly recognisable.
My daily driver is a 96 3.2 sport. It may not, technically be as good as the E38 7 series, or have the silence and toys of a Lexus, but it has a certain something that one can't really describe without sounding a bit poetic. A hundred mile each way commute is handled with aplomb, the cosseting quietness eases the stress after a long day and it still, after 4 years and 50k miles, gets a second look each time I park it. It cost me £2k, I have used almost £12 grand's worth of fuel and it has been supremely reliable (apart from the clock).
I am never going to sell it.
I am never going to sell it.
This country is so talented at making something ground breaking and then letting it go to pot:
Jaguar XJ6 & XJS
De Havilland Comet
TSR2
Ford Transit
Supersonic flight (yes the American's got there first but the X-1 is a total copy of our design that we were developing when they asked to 'share ideas').
......and that is a very small number of a very long list.
The trouble is that us plucky Brits haven't got much left to lose any more
Jaguar XJ6 & XJS
De Havilland Comet
TSR2
Ford Transit
Supersonic flight (yes the American's got there first but the X-1 is a total copy of our design that we were developing when they asked to 'share ideas').
......and that is a very small number of a very long list.
The trouble is that us plucky Brits haven't got much left to lose any more
Zircon said:
This country is so talented at making something ground breaking and then letting it go to pot:
...
De Havilland Comet
...
De Havilland Comet
Have to pull you up on that one: De Havilland Comet was actually a decently successful aircraft, despite its unfortunate role in teaching engineers about metal fatigue.
Variants of Comet 4 survived in active duty until 2011, when the last Nimrod was retired.
Unfortunately, having your aircraft fall out of the sky for no readily apparent reason turns out to be rather bad for publicity; it wasn't "The British" or even De Havilland's fault that Comet would never again compete on level terms with Boeing, Douglas, etc. - but we can rightly claim that thanks to Comet, we taught the entire world how to build a better airliner...
Zircon said:
TSR2
Ford Transit
TSR2 I'll give you, that was a truly squandered opportunity.Ford Transit
Ford Transit? The most successful light van in the world, ever? Don't get that one.
AdeV said:
TSR2 I'll give you, that was a truly squandered opportunity.
Ford Transit? The most successful light van in the world, ever? Don't get that one.
Because we have just lost the most successful van in the world to the turks to manufacture! More jobs lost. Ford Transit? The most successful light van in the world, ever? Don't get that one.
As for the Comet /Nimrod, it was only really us who bought it after the crashes - it never sold world wide like it should have done.
Yes we are forerunners but that doesn't help you when Jaguar is owned by India and BMW is still owned by Germany. We innovate but never build on what we achieve or put things right.
We have no home owned car industry and other than BAE and Rolls, we have no aircraft industry left either. That means when the turks offer to build for less the foreign owners ditch the UK.
Rushmore said:
So, why is it that the relatively tasteful X300/308 cars, with their sleek, low and elegant lines, are seen as criminal's cars etc in the UK?
Vice versa: we Germans are all amused that the walrus-like S500 W140 coupe and its younger brother, the W220 coupe, is so cherished in the UK. CLs are seen as cars for pimps, dogdy construction industry tycoons and the like:-)))
Hmmm, well I sold my X300 and got a W140 Coupe, so I'm not entirely sure what that says about me!Vice versa: we Germans are all amused that the walrus-like S500 W140 coupe and its younger brother, the W220 coupe, is so cherished in the UK. CLs are seen as cars for pimps, dogdy construction industry tycoons and the like:-)))
The 140 Coupe is quite rare over this way (and I'm told mine is the only one in Jersey), so people don't have too many pre-conceived notions of the sort of person who drives it, but certainly it has a more aggressive image than the Jag. I've always liked the 140, and so it was the natural thing to get when I moved on from the Jag!
Zircon said:
This country is so talented at making something ground breaking and then letting it go to pot:
Jaguar XJ6 & XJS
De Havilland Comet
TSR2
Ford Transit
Supersonic flight (yes the American's got there first but the X-1 is a total copy of our design that we were developing when they asked to 'share ideas').
......and that is a very small number of a very long list.
The trouble is that us plucky Brits haven't got much left to lose any more
I think whats Zircon's getting at is that we (yes us brits..) designed the 1st long range commercial jet airliner, the DH comet , ok in the days when stress requirements in differring components wasnt fully understood - hence the square windows (later replaced by round) . The TSR 2 was for political reasons, replaced by the F111 (which cost us a whole lot more, and not hugely successfull in its role) , in an era when the government of the day were courting US investment.Jaguar XJ6 & XJS
De Havilland Comet
TSR2
Ford Transit
Supersonic flight (yes the American's got there first but the X-1 is a total copy of our design that we were developing when they asked to 'share ideas').
......and that is a very small number of a very long list.
The trouble is that us plucky Brits haven't got much left to lose any more
Miles aircraft built the M52...which has an obvious resemblance to the X1 (dont forget at this time, and its well document it was supposed to be an exchange of technical ideas... what didnt we get ?..oh yeh anything back, hence why we (UK) had to develop our own nuclear capability at the time. As for the transit van , cant comment on that one, cos I dont know!
However our concept of the Jaguar...'waftability' ..(I've never owned one), somehow seems peculiarly British...unhurried, unflustered...but dear boy...we can get a bit of a wiggle (hurry..) on ...should we wish...
Zircon said:
AdeV said:
TSR2 I'll give you, that was a truly squandered opportunity.
Ford Transit? The most successful light van in the world, ever? Don't get that one.
Because we have just lost the most successful van in the world to the turks to manufacture! More jobs lost. Ford Transit? The most successful light van in the world, ever? Don't get that one.
As for the Comet /Nimrod, it was only really us who bought it after the crashes - it never sold world wide like it should have done.
Yes we are forerunners but that doesn't help you when Jaguar is owned by India and BMW is still owned by Germany. We innovate but never build on what we achieve or put things right.
We have no home owned car industry and other than BAE and Rolls, we have no aircraft industry left either. That means when the turks offer to build for less the foreign owners ditch the UK.
Comet/Nimrod: yeah, that's the penalty for being first really. Boeing could (rightly) say "Our planes don't fall out of the sky", which Comet (until quite late on) couldn't. However, it is highly unfair, I feel, to suggest that somehow the brits "screwed it up". We went first, we found the biggest pitfall, learned a shedload about metallurgy and metal fatigue, how to avoid it, etc. Not our fault the rest of the world could-shouldered the Comet...
A new day, a new page and a new pic of the delicious Jag.
I also found this whilst trawling through classifieds, it looks very tidy. A bit of a bargain?
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/used-cars/jaguar/xj/us...
I also found this whilst trawling through classifieds, it looks very tidy. A bit of a bargain?
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/used-cars/jaguar/xj/us...
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