One man’s mission to make his Jaguar stand out from the crowd has seen this F-Type gain a subtle new identity
SO YOU’RE in the motor trade then?” is a question I often find myself asking when chatting to Jaguar owners on photo shoots, but in the case of Darren Jackson’s modified F-Type, the number plate told me all I needed to know. As you might have guessed, he’s in the heating and plumbing business and as a result spends his working week at the wheel of a white Vivaro, to which the Jaguar makes a welcome contrast come the weekend.
Darren’s journey with the F-Type began with a tour of the Castle Bromwich plant courtesy of a family member employed at JLR, during which he had the chance to sit in a pre-production prototype. Clearly impressed, our man made up his mind there and then that he’d get one. “I thought I’ll buy one of these when I’m 60,” he remembers, but an unexpected inheritance a few years later saw him achieve his goal a decade earlier.
This was back in 2017 and the perfect car was located at a Jaguar main dealer: a base model 2014 V6 coupe, three years old at the time and showing 8000 miles... although the term ‘base’ is rather misleading since the entry-level F-Type runs the supercharged V6 engine good for 340bhp.
As viewed, the car wore the chrome detailing on the windows and wing vents, but Darren knew exactly what he was after and had the ‘Black pack’ fitted by the supplying dealer, sensibly leaving them to deal with any broken clips and similar.
As you can imagine, on a white car that simple change transformed its appearance and Darren was suitably inspired to take things further. Like so many of us 50-somethings, he was into Mk2 Escorts in his late teens and admits that the only thing which would have swayed him from the F-Type was a nice Mk2 at the right price. Meanwhile, the modifying bug contracted during his Escort days had never really gone away, which explains why the Jaguar was destined not to stay showroom-stock for long.
Job number one was to get rid of the bumper bar in the nose, in the interests of giving the car a cleaner look. This was achieved relatively easily by buying the Project Seven front grille assembly, although it did require the nosecone to be removed in order to fit it. Ever the perfectionist though, Darren made the most of the opportunity to get the front end repainted while it was off the car, to deal with the few stone chips it came with.
The new grille also meant there was nowhere to house the number plate, so harking back to his Escort days, Darren had a stick-on plate made up. A proper job, with the correct font, spacing and reflective backing it makes a subtle but effective difference with a nice hint of classic E-Type to it.
