1990 Jaguar Xjs on 2040-cars

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Jaguar will sell 10 fully restored Series 1 E-Types

The Jaguar Land Rover "Reborn" program is expanding its offerings yet again. The newest offering is the first from the Jaguar side of the company, and naturally the first car is a Series 1 E-Type. Jaguar Classic will restore 10 of the first-generation E-Types, and the cars will be sold directly to consumers from the company. The very first of the cars is the 1965 model you see above, which will make its public debut next week at the Techno-Classica Essen show in Germany. It's a 4.2-liter model finished in "Opalescent Gunmetal Grey." According to Jaguar, it was originally sent to California where it racked up 78,000 miles, and then was put into storage in 1983. Jaguar then acquired the car, and the Jaguar Classic department proceeded to restore it to factory specifications. Jaguar fixed and retained as many original parts as possible, and used replacement Jaguar Classic parts as needed. The car is fully numbers-matching with the original engine and transmission. If you're interested in purchasing this E-Type, or one of the other nine, you'd better have a hefty pocketbook. A standard restored car done to factory specs will start at about $355,000 at current exchange rates. If you want to spend more, Jaguar offers a few extra cost options such as an upgraded cooling system based on the one found in the Lightweight E-Type, a fully synchromesh transmission for early models without it, and upgraded front brake calipers from the later Series 2 E-Type. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: 1994 Jaguar XJ12

While Americans were able to buy new Jaguar two-doors with V12 engines under their bonnets from 1971 all the way through 1996, availability of new Jaguar 12-cylinder sedans was much spottier here. The Series 1 and Series 2 XJ12s were sold here from the 1973 through 1979 model years, and then there was a grim Jaguar V12 four-door drought here all the way until the 1994 model year. Here's one of those very rare felines, found in a Northern California boneyard in April. Jaguar had developed the XJ40 successor to the Series 3 XJ over an agonizingly protracted period that spanned the British Leyland era of the early 1970s through the first production cars being shown to the world in 1986. The XJ40 first appeared in the United States as a 1988 model. The following year, the Ford Motor Company bought Jaguar. The engineers in Coventry struggled to design a viable V12-engined XJ40 for years, giving it the XJ81 designation. At long last, the XJ81 was revealed to the motoring world in 1993… just prior to the replacement of the XJ40 by the XJ300 for the 1995 model year. All of the XJ81s sold in the United States—just over 1,500 of them in all—were 1994 models. This junkyard provided a bonanza of rare European iron when I stopped by on that chilly spring morning. Located within a few rows of this one-year-only XJ81 were a Volkswagen Phaeton and a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. The yard also had a running Peugeot 504 for sale in their "builders" section, and I'll admit I was very tempted by it. The April 1994 production date indicates that this is one of the very last members of the XJ40/XJ81 family to be built (though Jaguar continued to use platforms derived from the XJ40 until the X350a arrived as 2003 models). This 6.0-liter engine was an excruciatingly tight fit in this engine compartment (there are semi-credible tales that the XJ40's engine compartment was made so narrow as a sneaky office-politics means of preventing British Leyland from installing Rover V8s in Jaguars), and working on it must be a mechanic's nightmare. Output was 301 horsepower and 336 pound-feet. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz's V12 was rated at 389 horsepower and 420 pound-feet, while BMW's V12 had 296 horsepower and 332 pound-feet. The MSRP for this car was $73,200 for the dual-airbag version (and we can see that both airbags were deployed in this car's career-ending crash). That amounts to $151,889 in 2023 dollars.

Jaguar Land Rover parent Tata posts a loss over coronavirus

BENGALURU — India's Tata Motors posted a wider loss for the September quarter on Tuesday as the COVID-19 pandemic sapped demand in several of its key markets. The global health crisis has hammered sales for automakers worldwide and compounded problems for Tata Motors, which was trying to improve Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) sales amid weak demand and uncertainty related to Brexit. Tata Motors reported a consolidated net loss of 3.14 billion rupees ($42.47 million) for the second quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of 2.17 billion rupees a year earlier. Retail unit sales at luxury car unit JLR, which rakes in most of the company's revenue, was down nearly 12% for the reported quarter. Tata Motors, however, said it expects JLR sales to gradually improve. "Despite concerns around the risk of a second wave of (COVID-19) infections ... we expect a gradual recovery of demand and supply in the coming months," the carmaker said in an exchange filing. Total revenue from operations fell 18.2% to 535.3 billion rupees. Tata Motors said it was committed to achieving near-zero net automotive debt in the coming years. Shares of Tata Motors ended 1.46% higher on Tuesday while the broader Mumbai market settled 1.03% higher.