Information on early Cabriolet

Can anyone give me some information on this car? It is a factory XJS HE V12 1983 - first year of the soft tops. Purchased in Glasgow, exported to Australia in 92. It looks like a targa/cabriolet but the rear windows look like a coupe. Doesn’t look like the wide targa rollbar where the front and rear windows meet. Anyone give me some insight on this one? Or even on the different Cabriolet versions? Could be a rare early one.8
12

I have an XJ-SC. This is not that. It is also not a Hess and Eisenhart convertible. It is most likely a modified coupe.

Mark,
Use one of the online Jaguar VIN decoders and see what comes up when.you put in the VIN.

I suspect that it was a coupe that was modified.

Paul

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Do the rear windows move?

pic of my XJSC, notice the body rail around bottom of soft top,its the same, an old pic , it was a 1978 Coupe orginally, supposed mods done by Aston Martin.
pic of hood/bonnet letters. any chance it is the same car, who did the folding soft top?
improrted 1986!
ron

. . ron

OP car has chrome on bumpers, mine does not ?
maybe even earlier, mine when i was redoing it , had a paint that was very hard to get off, i thought some type of undercoat, but body paint guy came by and looking closely said it was MILITARY olive drab?
who would paint an old Jag with Mil. paint?
and mine is RHD ,right hand drive!
ron

Ok checked the vin decoder. Strange. It says it’s a 1982 coupe 5.3l you think this could be a very early coupe that was converted? I thought the Super early ones that were converted were stamped as cabriolet not as coupe. Could be wrong?

Mark,
Yes, I suspect that your car was a coupe that was modified by an.independent shop after it left the factory.

There was disappointment in the market place when Jaguar commenced production of the XJ-S for several reasons, and one was that there was only a coupe and there was no convertible option. Enterprising independent shops met this need by modifying coupes to suit their customer’s liking. A cabriolet conversion would be the easiest since some roof structure remains for stiffness and no convertible top hydraulics are required. Jaguar started with the cabriolet conversions from coupes themselves in 1983 or so and eventually produced the first production line convertible around 1988. In the meantime Lynx, Hess and Eisenhardt, and many small shops modified coupes to meet the demand for open air XJ-S motoring. It might be worth your while to seek out a factory XJ-SC, or at least pictures of some, for a detailed comparison. There are some XJ-SC owners on this list, but I am not one of them.

Paul

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something of interest , i had my car weighed, it weighs 3420 lbs!
much lighter than a coupe , so Aceleration performance is greatly increased!
ron

Thanks Paul yes I think it is one of these cars. It would be interesting to see how many of these were done and by which shops. Mine is a 1982 HE and the conversion is unlike any I can find anywhere.

Interesting that whoever did the mod didn’t affix an ID plate of sorts inside the door jamb or somewhere. I think that may be required here in the US, but I presume in the ROW you could just pay your money for someone to lop off the roof and end up with no records of the mod whatsoever.

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mine has a MOT sticker inside dash glove box, with numbers, and it says "seating capacity 2 "

also it has no rear seats ,just storage space, pix

.jag%20XJS%20rear%20seat%20delete%20001 .jag%20XJS%20rear%20seat%20delete%20003 .
some times military pilots would have there cars modded ,might explain the Mil.paint!
when i got mine 1993 it had sat from 1986 till 1993 in a New Jersey warehouse , never ran, so lot of major restore! i cut the silly looking Cabrio off, and its now a Roadster(to each his own), finally got it running 1995, new engine, and trans. and drive train! + plus brake mods , suspension mods, 275-35-18 Custom wheels!
maybe these are very rare Mystery vehicles?? LOL.
also mine is much faster than any other XJS that i have driven , course i modded the performance part of it, the only reason i’d do that is precisly for the V12 engine!
ron

Mark i notice the rear trunk/boot lid has the Black inset, with the backup lights!
mine has that as Silver inset with lights?1523997714326 .ron

Not strange Mark, it is an after market conversion. I saw some pictures of the same conversion on a web site recently, but have been unable to find on Google.

Mark,
I suspect that there is no way of knowing how many Jaguar XJ-S coupes were converted into cabriolets, convertibles or drop tops by aftermarket independent shops. Jaguar would certainly not have this info. Seems to me that there is an organization of XJ-SC cabriolet owners much like the XKEDATA.COM site for E-Types. It gets mentioned from time to time here but I can’t recall the name. Maybe one of the current XJ-SC owners can help there. I have no idea if that group keeps track of the aftermarket conversions but if anyone does they might.

Paul

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Ron, from 76-82 the inset was silver, then from 82-92 it was black, according to a parts catalog I looked at…

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