Jaguar XJR

After much wrangling, the Jaguar board of directors finally sanctioned an £80 million investment for a replacement for the XJ6 in 1981.

By the time of launch in October 1986, the spend had totalled over £200 million but the company had undergone a revolution in the way it designed, developed and produced cars which was to stand them in good stead for the future. The new car used a completely new architecture and managed to include the latest in production engineering technology. It was able to compete with BMW and Mercedes head-on in terms of refinement, reliability and performance.

By 1995 the car was starting to look a little 'square' and had by this time earned its fine reputation for reliability and build quality. The X300 arrived based on the same centre architecture as the older model, with new front and rear styling, emphasising the more traditional and curvaceous Jaguar lines, no doubt due to some adverse public comments on the launch of its predecessor. In any event it certainly hit the spot, with strong sales, particularly in Jaguar’s export markets. The range topper used a supercharger to boost power from the 4.0 litre straight-six to 322bhp which firmly placed the car in the big league.

This superb supercharged XJR has covered just 45,500 miles from new and has had 3 former keepers. The vendor purchased it from a local publican who had given it to his mother who never drove it as it was too big and powerful. It has covered just 1300 miles in the last 3 years whilst its service history shows that it covered just 8,000 miles in the five years between 2000 and 2005, with only another 3,500 added since then. It has recently been fitted with four new Pirelli tyres and is MOTd until August 2013. This is a most striking, low mileage example of this high performance luxury saloon which any keen driver would be thrilled to own.