OUR CLASSICS
Mike’s Jag has slumbered long enough – it’s time to get some miles under those wheels. But it needed to pass an MoT first…
1997 JAGUAR XJ6 3.2 SPORT
I bought my Jaguar back in January 2020 and frankly my timing couldn’t have been worse if I’d tried.
I’d had the car for all of eight weeks – and managed one trip out to the seaside in it – when a certain virus shut the entire country down, leaving me with a dream car and nowhere to take it. Matters hardly improved in 2021 and the car spent most of last year ‘resting ’ when a local garage informed me – erroneously, as it turned out – that the differential was knackered.
The already pitiful total mileage that the car had covered between the last two MoTs would have been nothing short of an embarrassing joke if I hadn’t taken it to the last Bicester Heritage Sunday Scramble of the year back in October.
To wit, I have big plans for the Jag in 2023. Which is all well and good but I had to get it through an MoT first. And that in turn meant re-inflating the predictably and completely flat nearside rear tyre yet again. Still, MoT day dawned sunny and bright so the gentle cruise up the road to Formula One Autocentres in Pinchbeck was a pleasure, not least because I’d barely driven the car in more than a year.
I won’t draw the jeopardy tension out – YNO earned its brand-new MoT with ease and not a single advisory in sight. The car’s occasional habit of tramlining on uneven roads persuaded me to add a four-wheel balancing check into the mix but the results came back positive so I guess it’s just the price you pay for having a heavy and firmly sprung car running on big fat tyres.
No puncture was found on the nearside rear tyre, either, so either the valve is faulty or – more worryingly – the tyre isn’t sitting on the wheel properly. Either way, I’ll be getting a new one fitted sooner rather than later.
I celebrated the occasion the following morning by getting the car washed and waxed before taking it out for a cobweb-clearing run into the intermittently sunny but ferociously windy Lincolnshire countryside. I drive a 1.25-litre Fiesta every day so the thrill of suddenly having well in excess of 200bhp under my right foot always takes a bit of getting used to.
But it’s not so potent as to be above life’s rather more mundane tasks so I took the opportunity to run a few local errands Jag-style, before a refreshing blast up the A16 for a cheeky McDonald’s breakfast.
Wi
