Earlier this year, my compadre here at TTS gathered five V8-powered sedans that appeal to the enthusiast mind and whose entry fee shouldn’t immediately decimate your bank account (that comes later). While he nailed the 1998-2003 Jaguar XJ8 – a very pretty and not-horrible sedan pasted together with Ford-backed British stiff-upper-lipped diligence – he missed that car’s hotrod-in-a-tuxedo sister, the supercharged XJR of the same era. Continue reading
My cohort here at Totally That Stupid and I have a little game we play. It doesn’t have a name, and there are not really any rules to speak of. It goes something like:
“Craigslist. For sale. By owner. $[some random amount]. Go!” Continue reading
It’s amazing what a little bit of bad PR from 40+ years ago can do to a car company. Even Jaguar cars from the Ford period forward depreciate like just about nothing else on the market (save for the Kia Optima that I recently traded away – but that’s a story for another day). That is to say they just can’t hold their value despite a long-ago departure from the gremlins associated with Lucas Electrics, but they’ve just really never recovered. Now I’m not going to argue that they’re the most reliable cars on the market – they’re not – but they are on a par with most contemporary luxury cars from the past 30 or so years. And to our eyes, they’re prettier than most, especially the last of the old-school, old-tech XJ6s: the Series III. Continue reading
The Jaguar XJ-S replaced the aging E-Type in 1975, but purists were not amused. While there was no question to the E-Types prowess as a performance sports car despite the numerous “upgrades” the cars received over the years, the XJ-S was definitely more of a grand tourer. The absence of an open version of the car further upset the Jaguar cognoscenti. Still, the XJ-S was quite competent in the company of cars like the BMW 6-series and Mercedes 450SLC, and was more than comfortable in the company of more exotic machinery like the Ferrari 400i. This pristine black on black leather example can be found on eBay in Houston, Texas. So far, the reserve has not been met.
