A heavy schedule sees Paul using the Project XJ8 to drive to photoshoots all over the country. But is the car reliable?
WANT TO know the hardest working member of the Jaguar World team? It’s not my coffee machine, Jim Patten’s keyboard or even Craig Cheetham’s toolbox. It’s our XJ8. Due to a hectic workload leading up to the recent festive season, I used the car for countless journeys all over the UK for photo shoots. Yet, like my Nespresso, it never let me down.
You may remember I bought the car for a mere £2,700 in March 2017 and, although it came with more flashing lights than a Seventies disco, I could see the potential. And, sure enough, after specialists Tasker & Lacy and Nene Jags fit parts supplied by our friends at SNG Barratt, plus a set of Vredestein tyres, the car is now transformed into the reliable and comfortable cruiser I knew it could be. I hope I’m not wrong about that when I leave my house in the East Midlands for Wake field one morning to visit the subject of this month’s specialist feature, Tennyson James. I needn’t have worried, though. The car behaves impeccably and is smooth and comfortable for the 90-mile journey. It’s fast too. Despite the odometer showing over 117,000 miles, the V8 feels as spirited and as eager as a newborn lamb and I constantly have to rein it in to avoid encroaching into licence-loosing speeds.
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The Old Way
With manufacture of the X351 XJ now finished, the F-TYPE takes over the mantle of Jaguar’s oldest production model. To discover more about the continuing allure of this six-year-old sports car, we drive a 380PS V6 convertible from Lincoln to Bath on the UK’s oldest road, the Fosse Way
Saving Jaguar
On the brink of the abyss in the early Eighties, Jaguar saw its fortunes turned around by a new chairman, John Egan. We meet up with him at the Jaguar Heritage Trust at Gaydon to talk about his strategies for the company’s recovery
Rolling road
A SNOWY February morning is not the ideal time to be taking out a pristine Jaguar E-type, and an early Series 1, flat-floor model at that. But my mate Bryan Smart has booked his in for a three hour session on a rolling road, and doesn’t want to miss the appointment. He’s not looking for more power – this car is standard, but it doesn’t idle as smoothly as it should. He’s not bad with spanners himself, but neither he nor a couple of specialists have been able to solve the issue.
Jaguar World's Technical Advice Service
E knock off
1966 E-Type Fixed Head Coupe
Trimmed and ready to be toned, Jim’s E-type Series 1 fixedhead returns home fromMCT Restorations
Favourite things
With a 300PS diesel engine and a lightweight, handsome body, the XF 3.0 TDV6 S could be the editor’s best-choice saloon of the current range. To discover if that’s true, he takes an example to a well-loved location of his, the Yorkshire Dales.
Jim Patten
MOT exemption
Time Warp
Carcoon will be 25 years old in 2018, so we meet the people behind the scenes to discover how the bubble idea came about
1984 XJ6 Series 3 4.2 Sovereign
Iain relays the joys and disappointments of buying an XJ6 Series 3 project car for our sister title, Classics Monthly
Family Ties
Despite the thirty years that separate the E-type 2+2 Series 1 from the XK8 they have many similarities – such as being fun and the added practicality of four seats to attract the family man. We test 4.2-litre versions of both cars back-to-back.
