I make no secret at all of my love of Jaguar’s big saloon cars – especially those of the Eighties and Nineties, which I’ve owned in various guises since I was first able to scrape together the insurance premium in my mid-20s.
The title of Autocar magazine’s article in October 1967 said it all: ‘Bertone-Jaguar: no dream car – but not for you and me’. This one-off gran turismo wasn’t the first Bertone-bodied Jaguar, witness the Franco Scaglione-styled XK150 and Marcello Gandini-designed ‘FT’ that was based variously on S-type and 420 saloon foundations for Italy’s marque concessionaire, Ferruchio Tarchini. However, in this particular instance, there was no intention of making the Pirana in even the most limited of numbers. It was a concept queen, and a compelling one.
The Jaguar C-Type’s arrival in 1951 might have quickly made the XK 120 obsolete as a racing car but the British Racing Drivers’ Club still chose the now four-year-old model when it was organising a Race of Champions event at the 1952 Daily Express meeting on 10 May.
The facelifted XK8s from 2003 onwards were the best of the bunch thanks to Jaguar’s new 4.2- litre V8 – and in non-R format they’re a terrific bargain that still come with plenty of clout.
If you were an executive in the late Sixties and early Seventies, there was only two choices of car – the Spartan Mercedes-Benz W114 or the prestigious Jaguar XJ6. With both cars worth similar values today, how do the 2.8-litre versions of both compare now?
Although derived from the Le Mans-winning XJR-9, making it extremely fast, the TWR-developed XJR-15 isn’t officially part of Jaguar’s past canon of work and therefore often overlooked. We explain the car’s history before track-testing the prototype at Mallory Park in Leicestershire
It cannot be said that Jaguar 420Gs are as rare as hens teeth, but they were never numerous and now good examples are even harder to find. But here we have a wonderful example, the personal choice of the ex-Lord Mayor of Adelaide.
Initially controversial, the XJS became Jaguar’s longest running model. In its 21st and final year of production, the company launched the ‘XJS Celebration’ – now deemed by many to be the most desirable of the range – We examine its history and find out what makes them so special…
There was more than a little criticism from the press when in early 1982 Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) announced it was to enter the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) with a Jaguar XJ-S. Big, heavy and very thirsty, it was – on paper at least – an unsuitable choice for this highly competitive series, just as the XJ12 Coupe had been five years earlier. Worse still, TWR’s effort had limited backing from the factory, only getting paid when the cars finished on the podium. With BMW dominating the series, doing so would be a tall order.
Any Jaguar XJ6 Series 3 with a manual gearbox is unusual, but more so when it’s a luxurious Daimler Sovereign. We track down a rare example and explain its significance
Wanting an E-type for sprints and hill climbs, Darren Tyre has transformed a lowmileage Series 2 fixedhead coupe into a fast, unique and well-developed racer
