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1977 Jaguar V12 Xjs Coupe Rare First Version 28,000 Mles One Owner on 2040-cars

US $12,500.00
Year:1977 Mileage:27796
Location:

Limestone, Tennessee, United States

Limestone, Tennessee, United States
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1977 JAGUAR XJ-S GRAND-TOURING COUPE

(VERY FIRST VERSION OF THE XJ-S)

 

This is a gorgeous, magnificent, regency-red motor car, with a 5.3-litre, V-12 engine with only 27,796 actual miles on the clock as of today’s writing (03DEC13).   According to Steve Kennedy’s wonderful Jaguar book, “Jaguar, The Classic Marque,” only 1,269 12-cylinder, left-hand-drive first-versions of the XJ-S were built.  So, this is quite a rare car.  One of the Jaguar technicians who has done maintenance work on this car told me he rarely sees an XJ-S of this early vintage any more and it is the cleanest one he’s ever seen.   The car has been serviced by John Nance, the British Motor Specialist in Kingsport, Tennessee, and by Dick Maury at Coventry West near Atlanta.  Both of these gentlemen are intimately familiar with the car and can give their opinions regarding it if asked.

 

It has the GM Turbo Hydramatic 400 automatic transmission which replaces the earlier Borg-Warner model 12 automatic transmission.  It is one of the earliest XJ-Ss to be so equipped.  As a Jaguar-club member, I had already seen the factory bulletin that announced the change to the GM gearbox.  So, when I bought the car, in early 1978, I asked the salesman at the Jaguar dealer if this car had the new GM Hydramatic transmission.  He looked at the car’s VIN, which ends in “BW,” and told me, “No, it has the Borg-Warner transmission.”  But, when I examined the documents that came with the car, I found that it did have the GM Turbo Hydramatic 400 automatic transmission.

 

Its date of manufacture is September 22, 1977, and it was dispatched from the factory on November 14, 1977, to British Leyland, Los Angeles.  I bought the car new from the Jaguar dealer in Santa Maria, California on March 7, 1978.  It is therefore a one-owner car, having been owned since new by myself and never having been sold to anyone else since its original purchase.

 

Mechanically the car is in excellent condition with no problems that I’m aware of.  It drives like a dream; the low-mileage engine runs like a smooth turbine.  It has been meticulously maintained  throughout its lifetime.  All original documents, service records and the heritage certificate are available.  It is just about the “best-driving” car I have ever driven.

 

The body has minor damage from burglars or vandals breaking into our garage in Santa Maria, California, where the car was stored for six years while we were in medical mission service on the island of Guam from 1985 to 1991.  The body damage is of such minor nature that I haven’t felt it to be worthwhile to spend a lot of money to repair it.  The roof of the car has some minor ripples but they are noticeable only if examined closely.  There are a couple of other minor dents in one door and on the top of one fender. 

 

The burglars also removed and stole all four of the Kent road wheels off the car.   The car was stored on blocks which made it easy to remove the wheels.  When we returned from our six-year tour of mission service on Guam, all I could find to replace them were used wheels.  So, I purchased 4 used wheels of the same type and cleaned them up and had 4 tubeless Michelin X Steel-Belted Radial tires of the original correct size mounted on them.  For some reason, even though the boot lid was not locked, the thieves did not remove the spare wheel and tire and they are still present and original with little or no use since new.  The damage to the roof also caused damage to the headliner inside the car.  There is a new red, vinyl headliner in the car, which gives it a very nice, neat and new appearance. The rest of the black interior is still present and in good condition.  The black leather seats are still the original items that came with the car.  The black carpets are still original and in very good condition.  The car still has that “new” smell.  The interior of the boot is very clean and looks new.  The Die-Hard battery has probably been replaced a time or two.  It is constantly connected to the “Battery Tender Plus” which is computerized and keeps it charged up but not overcharged.

 

The XJ-S comes with a beautiful $200 “BLOCK IT DUSTOP” car cover made by Covercraft and sold by the Big Sky Car Cover outlet in Montana.

 

The reason for finally arriving at the painful decision to sell this magnificent car is that I am 85 years old and I am becoming less and less able to take care of this car and several other Jaguars that we own.  It is time to reduce the number of our “fleet.”  

Auto Services in Tennessee

White Bluff Car Care Inc ★★★★★

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TLC Automotive ★★★★★

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Tennessee Clutch & Supply Inc ★★★★★

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Auto blog

Our 2018 Jaguar F-Pace has an infuriating shifter

Tue, Feb 13 2018

Let me preface this by saying that I quite enjoy our long-term 2018 Jaguar F-Pace. Its quick, handsome and pretty good on a road trip. It handles well for a crossover, too. My biggest gripe with the F-Pace is the interior, and my biggest gripe with the interior is the damned rotary shifter. I've never fought a vehicle so much just to get it to shift into reverse and neutral. I have a tendency to rant, but usually offline, in the company of friends and under the influence of a few drinks. I've spent a lot of time behind the wheel of the F-Pace, and an incident this week in an automatic car wash this week prompted this post. Simply put, it took probably 10 seconds for me to get it to shift into neutral and another 10 seconds to get it back into drive. This is annoying in any situation, but when you're holding up a line of cars trying to wash off a thick layer of salt and ice, it's infuriating. The rotary shifter simply wouldn't rotate into either drive or reverse. This might be user error and it might be exclusive to our particular F-Pace, but I don't recall have the same issue in our XE (I admittedly drove it less) and I definitely have never had such problems with other shifters. Not even the BMW-style fixed rocker type or weird handle ones in the Toyota Prius. I even consulted the owner's manual to make sure I'm doing it properly. The only thing I can think of is that I'm not putting enough pressure on the brake pedal while turning the dial. Yet, even those editors who haven't experienced this problem admit that the design has lost its way. Jaguar introduced the rotary shifter in the original XF back in 2009. At the time, its housing was compact and offset, serving the functional purpose of freeing up space for center console storage (as you can see in the photo above). The same concept was later applied to the Jaguar XJ and copied in the Ram 1500. Now, compare that design to the shifter in the F-Pace (as well as the XE and current XF). It's right in the center with a bezel that takes up as much room as the shift boot on a manual transmission. There's no added storage benefit and the surrounding piano black trim collects dust and fingerprints like a forensics squad. In other words, instead of a space efficiency solution, it's a space-robbing novelty that drives me nuts at the car wash. Related Video: Image Credit: Jeremy Korzeniewski, Jaguar Design/Style Jaguar Long-Term Garage Crossover SUV Luxury Performance jaguar f-pace jaguar f-pace s

Jaguar releases Desire short film starring F-Type and Damian Lewis

Wed, 24 Apr 2013

After stoking the hype with a theatrical-style trailer, Jaguar has finally released the full-length version of its mini-movie, Desire, to help kick off the new 2014 Jaguar F-Type. Starring Homeland actor Damian Lewis across from the lovely Shannyn Sossamon, the film has been turned loose on YouTube after an initial debut at the Sundance London film and music festival.
Shot in Chile's rather breathtaking Atacama Desert, Desire is described by the producers as being "A story of betrayal, retribution, passion and greed." Lewis plays the lead role of Clark, a high-end car delivery guy (great work if you can get it), who runs into an unexpected, sexy mystery when shuttling the lovely F-Type to the middle of nowhere. Who could have guessed?
We won't spoil any of the not-exactly-serious 13-minute plot for you; scroll down below to see for yourself if the theatrical pomp and circumstance is worthy of Jag's newest roadster.

Watch a Jaguar F-Type R drag a parachute at 186 mph

Mon, Jun 15 2015

With carbon-ceramic brakes on offer, the Jaguar F-Type R Coupe can shed off speed even faster than it can rack it up. Even the standard steel rotors do a pretty good job of it. But what would happen if you deployed a parachute out the back of the Jag at 186 miles per hour, like you might with a drag racer? That's what the British automaker has found out in this latest video. And just why would they do such a thing, you ask? Because Bloodhound, that's why. Jaguar is providing technical support to the Bloodhound SSC land speed record attempt, and one of the roles into which the F-Type has been pressed is to check the parachute that will (along with the air brakes and rotors) form an integral part of the jet- and rocket-powered vehicle's run. To make sure the chute would do its job, the team put Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green behind the wheel of the specially equipped F-Type at the RAF air base in Bentwaters, Suffolk, UK, had him speed down the runway up to the car's top speed and deploy the chute. Fortunately, as you can see from the minute-long clip, everything seemed to have gone according to plan – though we're not sure about the logic behind the assertion that if "it worked at 180, it will definitely work at a thousand miles an hour." Related Video: Jaguar F-TYPE Performs Mission Critical Parachute Deployment Test for British World Land Speed Record Challenger Bloodhound SSC 12 June 2015 - World land speed record holder Andy Green drives an F-TYPE R Coupe at top speed of 186mph to test Bloodhound SSC's parachute deployment system - The test continues Jaguar's technical partnership in the world land speed record attempt, following a high-speed communications test run in South Africa in 2014 - Jaguar will be at the heart of Bloodhound SSC providing its 5.0-litre 550PS supercharged V8 engine to power the rocket's oxidiser pump Today, Jaguar and the world land speed record holder RAF Wing Commander Andy Green performed vital high-speed parachute tests as part of the company's on-going technical support for this unique engineering adventure: creating a car that can cover a mile in just 3.6 seconds. The jet and rocket powered car, which aims to surpass the current record of 763.035mph before targeting 1000mph, has multiple braking systems including air-brakes ('doors' mounted on the side of the car which open to increase aerodynamic drag) and disc brakes (used when slowing down from 200mph).