2004 Jaguar X-type 2.5 Awd, 5-speed Manual, British Green Color No Reserve! on 2040-cars

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Jaguar F-Type Rally Car First Ride | This cat likes gravel

SOUTH WALES, U.K. — The invitation is last-minute and somewhat vague. The location, an off-road test area in South Wales known as Walter's Arena, sounds more Land Rover than Jaguar. It's also in five hours, and only a passenger seat tease is on offer. But a Jaguar rally car? Color me curious. First impressions don't disappoint. Basking at the entrance is NUB 120, so-named after its license plate and considered the most famous Jaguar XK120 of all. Built in 1950, it took three consecutive overall wins on the insanely arduous Alpine Rally. Driven by Jaguar dealer (and Olympic skier) Ian Appleyard and navigated by his wife Pat Lyons, daughter of Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons, this car helped demonstrate the power and durability of the legendary XK engine in the toughest possible test. Carrying its original paint and a few battle scars, I could stop right here. But its presence is simply justification for what's lurking a little deeper in the forest. That being an F-Type rally car. Which is exactly as wild as it sounds. Based on a regular 2.0-liter F-Type Convertible, the project riffs on Jaguar's little-known rally heritage and pending MY20 updates to the F-Type range. The 16-inch rally wheels, gravel tires, custom fabricated roll cage and hood-mounted spots are not adornments destined for any production F-Type. That said, it's clearly been built to do more than sit on an auto show plinth. This initially seems like the sort of thing that'd be an after-hours project by Jaguar Land Rover's Special Vehicle Operations department, the same guys who cooked up the Project 7 F-Type and XE SV Project 8 sedan. But there's something about the Below Zero Ice Driving branding on the support truck that rings a bell. SVO supplied the graphics and items like the F-Type GT4 carbon fiber door cards, but it turns out the actual build was outsourced to a specialist outfit. Their expertise is turning sports cars into rally machines, this following the FIA's ongoing efforts to revive the sport's sideways, rear-wheel drive traditions. See the Toyota GT86 CS-R3 and initiatives like the R-GT Cup, the latter popular with privateers in converted 911 GT3s and inspiring Porsche's recent toe-in-the-water Cayman GT4 Clubsport rally car. Then it clicks — the crew are from Tuthill Porsche, a celebrated restoration and race shop between London and Birmingham with a huge presence in historic competition. They also have a sideline running Swedish ice driving experiences in old Porsches.

Junkyard Gem: 1995 Jaguar XJR

It's not too difficult to find discarded examples of the supercharged-V8-powered Jaguar XJR of the X308 generation, but the earlier X300-based XJR with its blown straight-six is a much more elusive Junkyard Gem. Here's one that just turned up in a Denver self-service knacker's yard. For many years, the Denver Pick Your Part was a funky, muddy operation on an industrial stretch of Federal Boulevard. I bought a lot of parts for various projects and documented dozens of discarded vehicles for this series there. On April first, LKQ moved that operation to a brand-new location a half-mile away and I showed up early to experience the grand opening. I'll miss the old Denver Pick Your Part, even with the treacherous footing, but sometimes even junkyards get junked. The new location is set in a vast asphalt parking lot, which should make it easier for shoppers to get around and extract parts. One of the employees drives this seriously cool Scion xB project, so that's a good sign. As I walked the rows, this two-tone Jag caught my attention immediately. What's going on here? The VIN says it's a genuine XJR, complete with supercharged 4.0-liter straight-six rated at 322 horsepower and 378 pound-feet. That beat the 313-horse V12 in the XJ12 that sat next to it in the showrooms. The supercharger is a member of the same Eaton family that was used in the Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe. This makes sense, because Ford had purchased Jaguar in 1989. The U.S.-market X306 XJR was available only with an automatic transmission; a few hundred with five-speed manuals were sold in Europe. The version we got here was good for 14.9-second quarter-mile times and ran 0-60 in 6.6 seconds— not bad for a car that scaled in at 4,215 pounds. The MSRP was a cool $65,000, or about $134,206 in 2024 dollars. The 1995 XJ12 listed at $77,250, which comes to $159,499 after inflation. This generation of XJR was sold here for just the 1995 through 1997 model years, after which it was replaced by the V8 XJR. Just 6,547 were built. This one received a heavy customization at some point, including big SUPERCHARGED badging. The bonnet is covered with faux carbon fiber, which was all the rage during the early Fast & Furious Era. The upholstery has been redone in well-executed two-tone embroidered leather. I knew there had to be some traces of this car online. Sure enough, Mecum auctioned it in Denver back in the summer of 2015.

Junkyard Gem: 1977 Jaguar XJ6L

British Leyland began selling the Jaguar XJ in 1968, and production continued through multiple platform generations (and corporate owners) until just a few years ago. The original XJ was facelifted twice, in 1973 and 1979, with sales of the six-cylinder version extending into 1987 (Series 3 cars with V12s were built through 1992). Production numbers were never very high, but these cars proved popular in the United States and I still find them every so often during my junkyard travels. Here's a Series 2 XJ6 saloon that showed up in a Denver-area self-service yard last winter. Jaguar introduced a long-wheelbase version of the XJ saloon for 1972, giving it a four-inch stretch in order to better compete against the planned Rover P8. Since Rover was a fellow British Leyland brand, this was like Buick pouring big resources into crushing a threat from Oldsmobile, to the detriment of the overall company. In any case, the long-wheelbase saloons proved so successful that the short-wheelbase four-doors got the axe a couple of years later (the coupes stayed on the shorter chassis). Jaguar continued to add the "L" badging to the saloons for quite a while after that, presumably because it looked classy. The paint on all the upper body surfaces has been nuked down to the steel by the relentless High Plains sun, so we can assume that this car spent a decade or three sitting parked outside. It may have started out in Arizona, one of the few places with fiercer sunlight than eastern Colorado. Is it possible that it really turned a mere 46,630 miles during its life? With most cars of this vintage, I'd assume that the five-digit odometer has been turned over once or twice. With a Jaguar and its troublesome electrical components made by the Prince of Darkness, however, that's not such a sure bet. To own a car like this, you need to be willing and able to give it the money and work it requires to stay on the road; not many are suited to this responsibility. The interior looks to have been in very nice condition before the car got parked in a field somewhere. The wood interior trim has seen better days. Back in the 1970s, Mercedes-Benz had a big edge over Jaguar with mechanical sophistication and build quality, granted, but Jaguar beat those Stuttgarters hands-down when it came to making a car interior feel like a billionaire's library. The engine is a 4.2-liter XK6 straight-six, rated at 162 horsepower and 225 pound-feet.