XJ Loyalties
RIGHT NOW, I feel a bit tainted. I’ve been questioning my integrity, because I fear I may be about to turn my back on a long-term love.
You see, ever since it made its debut at the end of
1994, the Jaguar XJ ‘X300’ has been my favourite car ever made. I love it, ever since I first clapped eyes on a Turquoise XJR as an impressionable 17-year-old and committed myself to the cause.
I’ve owned several Jaguars, but my Turquoise X300 3.2 Sport (pictured) has always been my favourite. I love everything about it – the ride, the handling, the wonderful ‘modern-retro’ styling, the sound it makes, that lovely six-cylinder AJ16 engine. It even smells wonderful.
But the X300, much as I love it, has now been parked up for a couple of years, as the job list kept growing. I’ve got a huge parts haul for it and I’ll make it more wonderful than it ever has been, all in the fullness of time. It’s stored securely and I’m in no rush.
Yet I can’t be without an XJ in my life, so in the past couple of years I’ve bookended X300 ownership with two others. A late XJ40 and a 2000 X308 4.0 Sovereign.
The XJ40 is my fourth of the breed and I’ve always enjoyed them, but not as much as the X300. The X308 is my first, though I’ve driven loads of them over the years, from when they were new and I was a road tester on a motoring weekly to more recent times writing for this magazine, or photographing them for auction sales. I always loved them to bits, but they were never as special as X300s to my mind. Just lately, though, that has all changed. I’ve done 7000 miles in my X308, which is a wonderful example with a low-ish mileage (it was under 80k when I bought it, but not anymore) and with each and every journey, it has wormed its way under my skin.
Previously, I never got on with the X308’s cabin. It was too curvy, too plasticky and it lacked the sense of occasion that the X300 always delivered without fail. But that’s no longer the case.
You see, having lived with the X308 as pretty much a daily driver, it has grown more and more charming by the day. It’s smoother, even better to drive, and while I still think the X300 dashboard treatment is much grander, the X308 is far more user-friendly. No longer do I indicate to change lanes on the motorway and spend the next 17 miles indicating left and then right trying to get the flipping touch-sensitive column stalks to behave, while simultaneously wondering why my intermittent wiper is still on e
