John, thanks for the great picture and a short story of your XJ40. I don’t think people believe you when you tell them the mileage of your XJ40. But you have five other cars to enjoy.
That’s one of the interesting fact of my car that it hasn’t developed any rust around the base of the front windshield and rear window.
I haven’t owned any of my toy cars for 1/2 their age, but I have owned three that turned 50 under my stewardship!
Nice! Do you have antique plates on them?
Thanks for you complements. I don’t think XJ40s suffered from rust at the base of the front windscreen as it was a different design at the base. Series 1, 2 and 3 cars were another matter.
I’ve owned my 04/94 buil4 XJ40 since 1997.
Newly married, I was driving a 2nd generation Mazda RX-7 and my new wife had a 1990 Hyundai!
We decided to replace the Hyundai, though there wasn’t really anything wrong with it. We put a deposit
on a '97 Maxima and waited for the shipment to arrive. Got the call from the dealer that our car was
on the lot but the truck driver had torn the bumper cover getting it off the truck. Not wanting a "new"car that
already had a resprayed bumper cover, they assured me they’d swap a bumper cover from another new
Maxima. A few days later, another call. The bumper was fixed now a technician had scraped the door
moving our car in the parking lot!! We got our deposit back and regrouped.
I had been a member of the jag-lovers forum, back when all models were in one list.
I often ignored the XJ40 messages, because I was there to learn about the E-type. But after the Maxima
fallout, I realized from reading these emails, that the later XJ40s were quite good cars.
For about the same money as the Maxima ($26K) there were lots of 36-month old XJ40s just off lease available
from various dealers around the Metro D.C. area. These were “Select Edition” cars. We looked at a few and
were impressed, but I was not at all impressed with the condition of some of the cars. At a dealer in Rockville,
MD we saw a Select Edition car with nearly bald tires and surface rust around the wheel arch!!! So for $3K less,
we went to an independent luxury car dealer (that I just tonight heard advertising on the radio, so they still exist)
and bought our car. As I said, their price was $3K less than everywhere else AND they purchased the 5 volume
set of official Jaguar shop manuals for me as part of the deal!!
All these cars magically had right around 36K miles, the limit for a 36 month lease.
Ours is still in the garage and runs great. Only problem I’ve had was the intake manifold gasket that got sucked
in, leading to a big leak. We are now at 72K miles and don’t drive it very often. It is insured with Hagerty, so costs little.
The reason for the low miles is that we had our first child 3 years later and my wife quit working. But get this:
that old Hyundai became “my” car and I ran it until 2008 and got 412K miles on it! OH, I still have the RX-7 on
the road and it is now around 260K, though the original motor did break at 255K.
I should mention that I do all my own work.
-Ken
Yes, on four of the six. And some ownership stats: Morris convertible family owned for 100% of the life of the car, Austin America owned for 96% of its life and MGTD for 62%. I’m sure NOT keeping the new car industry alive.
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Ken, that’s a great story. Thanks for sharing it.