1986 Jaguar XJS V12 Auto Resto Project *Sold £1,200*

Description

• Restoration Project
• In Curlew Brown with Cream Leather Interior
• Low reserve
• Original Handbook set and supplements
• Original Service Book

When a car remains in production almost unaltered for 22 years, it genuinely is a classic car.

With the last E-types rolling off the production line in 1974 Jaguar needed a worthy successor. As early as 1968 Jaguar was thinking ahead. It designated the initial project a codename; XJ21. This morphed in to the XJ 27/28 and after many internal discussions Jaguar finally settled on XJS.

On the 10 September 1975 Jaguar revealed the XJS to the world.  The car was aimed squarely at the Mercedes SL customers and to help lure customers away from the German marque, it was priced at nearly £2,000 less on launch.

In V12 5.3 litre form, the Jaguar XJS is a true supercar, with performance of 155mph and 0-60 in 7.3 seconds. As models developed, Jaguar made subtle changes making the XJS even better. Journalists delighted their readers with tales of travelling at 100 mph in near total silence. The public couldn’t get enough of the XJS either.

As you can see, this example has been stored in a barn for quite some time. Originally purchased from a colleague, it was delivered as a runner and put in the barn. Our vendor, who has a small collection, had all intentions of tidying it up and using it as his own daily runner.

As so often with these grand plans, life took over and the recommissioning never got underway. Our vendor, who has now passed his ninetieth birthday, now accepts that that day will not come so he has decided to let someone else take on the project.

Surprisingly there is a decent enough documents pack with the car that includes:

• Two Jaguar Book packs
• Owner’s Manual
• Stereo Handbook
• Sales Booklet etc.
• Service Record
• Original pre-delivery check paperwork
• A handful of old MOTs

The bodywork is as is shown in the images; there are some obvious areas that need attention such as the lower valance behind both rear wheels, there is a hole in the offside front wing and there is a key scratch across the offside rear quarter panel. There is also a ding in the nearside rear bumper.  Beyond that you will have to make your own mind up as our vendor states the car will be sold exactly as it is with no guarantees or warranty.

As expected, the interior is a little dusty, but the cream leather seats are in decent enough condition with no obvious rips or tears, in fact they look surprisingly good. The door pads present well, and the wooden dash looks to be in good order. Spend a couple of hours detailing the interior and we suspect it will come up very nice, with the only real blip being the headlining which has succumbed to the usual XJS issue and is sagging where the glue has given up the ghost.

Mechanically, it is a bit of an unknown. We do know that there is currently no battery and as such the car has not been started for approximately five years. We also know it has 110k on the odometer. Other than that, we know little, although our vendor explained the car is said to have been running okay when he purchased it. In the documents pack there is an invoice from 10k miles ago showing that it had £3,500 spent investigating and resolving a coolant issue.  This included what look like new head gaskets, a new radiator, various pipes, and lots of work to the distributor and electrical system.

Either way, again, you will have to make up your own mind on how far you want to go with this restoration.

Our View

As you can see from this very short description, there is not a great deal known about its current condition. Our vendor cannot get under it to report on the condition of the underside, he also will not be attempting to start it and lastly it will be the winning bidder’s responsibility to collect and remove it from it’s current storage facility.

A proper barn find that will be sold as seen without warranty. Always an interesting proposition and with its very low reserve we expect it may get purchased for parts as it is likely worth much more broken up. If that does happen it will be a shame as it does actually have a lot going for it.