It's very nearly November, which in the Life On Cars household means enduring the expensive ordeal of insuring both a £300 Rover and a Mazda MX-5 at roughly the same time. With each year of driving around and not claiming for the cost of a crumpled heap of metal in a hedge my insurance has got a little bit cheaper, but I'm still paying more the cost of a year's insurance for the ancient Rover than the cost of the car itself.
Slightly depressed by that realisation, I turned to that opium of car enthusiasts, eBay, and immediately came up with a far more suitable banger. All 3.2 litres of a Jaguar XJ8, and mine for £750. I very nearly headed for the Buy It Now button, but then I clocked the wheelarch rot and a service history with more gaps than a jeans shop. So I moved on to the next offering.
Big mistake - I'd found a tidy T-reg Jaguar XJR, which back in the day would have set golfers back a cool £51,000 but was here, in the great Arthur Daley forecourt of cyberspace, for £1,750. True, it had 124,000 miles on the clock but it looked to be in good nick, and the thought of having 370bhp at my leather-lined, wood-trimmed disposal seemed tempting enough to look past the prospect of getting less than 20 to the gallon. It is, Jag people will know, a fabulous car; refined and graceful enough to wear the Big Cat badge with pride, but blessed with a 4.0 litre V8, beefy alloy wheels and sports trim and suspension for added zestfulness. Petrolhead heaven, basically.
Drunk with delight, I idiotically went to an insurance comparision website to find out how much it'd cost a twentysomething male working in journalism - which in insurance terms is about as dangerous a profession as they come - to make sure it was beyond my aspirations of automotive avarice. It wasn't. Someone as hamfisted as me could insure Coventry's finest, fully comp, for a shade over a grand, which unlike the Rover is less than the car itself cost.
I woke up the following morning and knocked the idea on the head, having realised in the cold light of day that having a supercharged Jag outside the house would be a stupid, expensive idea.
The only problem is, the insurance companies keep ringing me up now and suggesting otherwise!
UPDATE: An earlier version of this article included a picture of the special edition XJR 100 rather than the standard XJR. This has since been amended.
The picture is of an XJR 100 edition, celebrating Sir William Lyon's 100th anniversary...
ReplyDeleteIf you look in Jaguar World October, you'll see a similar car sold for over £13,000.
I'd suggest doing your research on these car's before publishing comments as you show little knowledge of the Jaguar marque or it's rare cars.
No confusion intended - the XJR in the article is clearly mentioned as being a T-registered example, making it two years older than the '100' edition, which was only pictured here for illustrative purposes.
ReplyDeleteHowever I'll update the picture accordingly, given that Life On Cars appreciates the Jaguar marque and its rare cars.
XJR 100'S CAME WITH 19 INCH 9 SPOKE ALLOY WHEELS,THE CAR IN THE PICTURE HAS 18 INCH 5 SPOKE PENTA ALLOY WHEELS,SUGGESTING THAT IT IS A STANDARD XJR8 97-99
ReplyDelete