Many years ago I wrote a weekly column for Autocar entitled ‘All the Cars I Never Bought’. The theme was coined by colleague and friend Chas Hallett, whom I’d occasionally bore with the classified discoveries currently threatening my thinly upholstered wallet. It was a joy to scribble about the gems trawled from hours of classified scanning, although the task came with risk.
Which was the possibility of enthusing myself into an actual purchase. Close calls involved a number of guilty pleasures including a Renault Vel Satis, a Citroën C3 Pluriel and a Chrysler Crossfire; more widely desirable fires of lust were triggered by early Porsche Boxsters, a Fiat Coupé and a 1975 Lotus Elite. Obviously the inevitable occurred and I succumbed to a particularly appealing Jaguar XJ-S. Of which there were still plenty about back in 2006, many runners surviving for little more than a few thousand pounds. Amazingly, that’s still the case today, although their numbers are fewer. As many a bargain XJ-S buyer knows these cars are cheap for a reason, and it’s not the sub-20mpg thirst of a 5.3-litre V12.
The main issue is the urge of this long, low Jaguar to return to Mother Earth in the form of brown dust. You can expect pre-powder scabbing to many of the obvious areas, such as the door bottoms, the trailing edges of the boot lid, the sills and the front wings, but more subtle and life-threatening (for car and budget) are corrosion to the deck panel behind the coupé’s rear window, because it’s so awkward to repair, and to the A-pillars in the door hinge area. A Jaguar corrosion engineer told me that it’s pretty much curtains for a car disintegrating in this area.
