Hi Larry,
My 84MY Series III Sovereign also has the sticker with the E11 markings on
it. e.g E11000100. This figure denotes that it is EC Approved in the UK
(E11), has an approval number (0001), of EC Document revision 0. I believe
they have something to do with the car passing some sort of European
standards regarding safety, but what exactly I don’t know.
I would say that your build plate is original. I think that the design was
held over from the mid sixties as the Daimler I owned from that period had a
very similar plate. The driver’s handbook for the Series III shows that
plate with no notation for the VIN number rectangle or the one above it.
Possibly it would have been used to denote a special body number or
something like that. Thorley’s book “Original XJ Jaguar” shows an early
vehicle with a number 031009 printed on the upper rectangle. The VIN on your
car is shown correctly.
The four rectangles show, from the top to bottom:
Gross vehicle weight
Gross train weight*
Max permitted front axle loading
Max permitted rear axle loading
*The gross train weight is the gross vehicle weigh plus the maximum
permitted trailer weight.
Interestingly, the handbook makes no mention of the figures being placed on
either side of the line, possibly it’s there so that if modifications were
carried out the revised figure could be inserted?
It’s possible that when you car was made, the final paint & trim codes had
not yet been worked out. On later cars a three letter code was used for
each. The GR shows the month and year R=1977 and G= July
Cheers,
Rick===================================================
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