It wasn't his first XJ40. He bought one of the first cars - a 3.6 litre XJ6 delivered in February 1987. Westminster blue with Savile grey leather, 6 speaker stereo, limited slip diff, sunroof, A/C and alloy wheels.
With all the hype surrounding its launch - unbelievably the BBC even made a TV program about it, "the making of the Forty" - on Youtube complete with the rotating BBC globe before it - and afterwards a public information film about joyriding in an 'older car', then on to shutdown with the National anthem. Nostalgic!
Youtube
The XJ40 attracted quite a bit of attention and they were difficult cars to get hold of back then with a huge waiting list.The same was true for the E32 BMW 7 Series, which came out a few months later. The salesmen described them as a "Premium car" - the euphamism they all used back then for "you pay over list and spec it to the nines". They were all at it and I guess me must have played that game - the incredibly keen introductory price of the XJ40 was an illusion in the real world.
The old fella loved the '40 from the start, but it was some distance from trouble free. I remember my dad and I going to pick the car up from the dealer with my grandfather - and returning with a good blast on the motorway at speeds few dare now. Fast. The '40 was a very powerful car back then; it was master of the motorway. Then we hit some rain... My dad flicked the wiper. It appeared, hitherto hidden under the bonnet as these earliest cars were, wiped half way, did a little dance then swept over - and swooshed off the car with a clatter. No nut: So much for the PDI. The rest of the journey with no wiper was rather slower...
A couple of months later, one of my father's business associates (who ran a SIII Daimler Double-six) said he was considering one of the new Jags and talked my dad into giving him a run out in it. This went well and he was impressed: dad was pleased. Right up to the point when he dropped him off back at his office . Door handle trouble: with impeccable timing the passenger's door recalictrantly refused to open, the handle simply flapping listlessly, unconnected to anything. "I'll have to get out your side", he said. In truth, my dad's driver's door handle had been a little feisty itself for a day or two and he had taken to getting in and out of the car from the passenger's side, so they had to scramble out of the back, between the seats. This would have been more amusing had the man not been so substantial a unit. My father seriously worried he might become stuck.
Here it is, Instamatic photo taken in 1988.
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It wasn't an auspicious start, but it was a superb car. When he came to replace it, my father didn't consider anything else. He bought another Jag. The car I have now.
I don’t have many photographs of it from long ago. I only got a digital camera in 2008, so have very few photos of it from before that.
These holiday photos I scanned in: they were taken by my dad, not by me. My father was a Francophile and had spent a lot of time there when he was younger. As a child we nearly always spent our holiday there and always with the car. My father loved to drive and planning was minimal. Where we would stay was decided on route. Town choice was simply a matter of restaurants. If he found one he liked, we would find an hotel.The caption for this photo my dad wrote says “France 1985”; that can’t be right so I’m thinking perhaps mid 1990s? I can imagine him taking these with his Olympus Trip 35, not quite capturing the whole bonnet.
My father was quite eccentric and one of the repairs I would later do to the car was a result of an incident on this trip. A particular favourite spot and an excellent restaurant was only reachable down a long, narrow alley with some long but fairly shallow steps. These had presented no problems in a Peugeot 504 many years before and he had managed them in a Ford Granada, but long, low Jags lack ground clearance and he beached the poor thing on them part way down and became quite stranded and needed to be pulled off by a Frenchman who probably thought getting your car stuck on a flight of stone steps was a perfectly normal thing. The scrapes on the underside would later rust and I would need to have then repaired.
Here is another photo, taken in the South West on a very narrow lane for a Jag! It is from about the same time.
The late XJ40 is a far better car than the first ones. The're well made, strong and very reliable cars which are capable of huge mileages. Mine really never goes wrong. They do like to rust. It is their only real weakness and has killed a lot of them. Sadly the XJ40 went through a long period when no one cared about them and huge numbers were scrapped for trivial problems. They have been significantly rarer than the E-Type for a number of years now.
I saved mine though! Here is how it looked back in 2011.
God, I've been struggling with this edit. The photo of the Blue whale didn't work and I have attached it to the forum which has been a struggle to place in the text with my technical skills
