Project Petrolhead

Growing up, I always loved Jaguars. Not the animal, I have no wish to have my face removed by a massive cat, but the Cars. From posters and models of lottery-winner dream machines like the XJ220, to the Kray-esque villainy of the Mark X, I very quickly fell in love with the marque.

Around April 2022, I decided it was finally time to upgrade my daily driver. As a life-long petrolhead I found myself yearning for a level of engineering and driver involvement that a VW Polo 1.2 TSi BlueMotion simply couldn’t satisfy. The epiphany came after a visit to the NEC Classic Motor Show with my Dad (Likewise a jaguar fan, a V12 XJS has long been a staple of his dream garage) where I found that the sort of cars I’d grown up reading about and drooling over in the pages of EVO magazine or while endlessly scrolling Autotrader had now depreciated to the point where, with a little work on my part, they may be attainable.

My criteria were simple, I wanted a car that could still somewhat pass as a sensible daily driver, but with enough going on under the skin to really ruffle some feathers. Economy was not my highest priority as I was lucky enough to be able to walk the reasonable distance to work, so the car would mainly be used for weekend fun with the odd commute thrown in for rainy days. An image, clear as crystal, formed in my mind of the car I had to buy… The Jaguar S-Type R.

With it’s classic homage styling (that has begun to age rather well, given how cold most people were toward it upon it’s reveal at the Birmingham Motor Show in 1998) paired with the substantial grunt of a 4.2 litre supercharged V8, it seemed like the perfect car for me.

And then I didn’t buy one.

Instead, while perusing the classifieds, my eye was drawn to another car, a contemporary of the S-Type but all the more special. The Jaguar XK.

Shockingly, the beautiful Ian Callum designed coupe had also found itself temptingly close to my price range. Sporting the same V8 as the S-Type (albeit sans supercharger) and an all-aluminium bodyshell, the XK was a clear step change from mere “fast cars” to the more rarified air of the purpose-built sports car. I had to have it.

Unsurprisingly, not everything was plain sailing. I purchased the car (a frost blue metallic painted coupe) from a small MOT garage in Coventry, whereupon I was assured that the car had passed it’s MOT with flying colours. Spurred on by this news, I decided to stretch the cars legs on the journey home (all within the speed limit of course, officer) before parking up outside my house. While showing the car off to my parents, I noticed that one of the tyres had started to deflate. That seemed odd as I would assume that the tyres would need to be at the very least new-ish in order to pass the MOT without any advisories, so I started to look a little bit closer. The inspection revealed that all four tyres were in what you might charitably call “a right state” and would need to be replaced before any further spirited driving could take place. Bugger.

Two years on, I still have the car. Many things have happened in the interim that have strained our relationship, but those are stories for another day. I still love almost everything about it; from the stunning bodywork (I always love looking at passing shop windows for that gorgeous reflection), the wonderful baritone burble of the exhaust on a cold day, to the way it simply oozes class in a way that I’ve never experienced in a car before.

The bottom line is this; throughout our ups and downs, I wouldn’t change it for the world!