HISTORY
For 35 years the previous owner of this rare XK150 3.4S coupe used it for touring Europe and we’ve driven it closer to home
ON A long journey, the feeling that the car is never fully extended and always has a reserve of power makes this a most untiring machine to drive,” reported the famed motoring journalist, John Bolster, in the June 5, 1959, issue of Autosport magazine about the then new XK150 3.4S fixed head coupe.
Although over six decades have passed since these words were written, it’s clear by the white example featured here that little has changed.
Since the late Eighties the current (and only second) owner has used the car for several European rallies. From France to Italy, Germany to Luxembourg, the car has travelled the length of breadth of the continent just as it was designed to 70 years ago.
The 3.4 S differed from the standard XK150 in featuring a Harry Weslakedesigned straight port cylinder head. Three 2in SU carburettors were then fitted to a new manifold while the compression ratio was raised to 9:1. There were also lead bronze bearings, a lightened flywheel plus a beefed-up clutch.
The result was the power increasing from the 190bhp of the standard 3.4 to 250bhp which dropped the 0-60mph time from 8.5 to 7.8 seconds.
The F-Type R of its day, the extra power made the 3.4S a formidable performer. “It is at once obvious that this is a very powerful engine,” continued Bolster in 1959. “It has immense torque, giving brisk starts in second gear if desired and seems more flexible than the normal Jaguar unit.”
Arriving in late 1958, this new S specification of 3.4-litre engine was initially only available with the open-two-seater but by the following summer it was joined by the other two body styles. Manufactured on 12 June 1959, it makes this coupe an early example.
Costing £2065 – £126 more than the standard model – just 199 right-hand-drive XK150 3.4S FHCs were built between 1959 and 1960, meaning it’s a relatively rare one too.
Originally in Pearl Grey with a red leather interior and supplied by Henlys of London, it was bought by Car Lighting Services of Birmingham as a company car for the owner of the business. He used the Jaguar extensively throughout the following decade but by 1970 it was in a poor state of repair and taken off the road.
In the late 1970s it was dismantled for restoration, the shell rebuilt by RS Panels in Nuneaton. A surviving invoice from 1980 shows the body was removed from the chassis and the panels repaired where necessary. The car was then painted in its original Pearl Grey.
After the engine was stripped, rebuilt and then fitted back to the chassis, for reasons unknown the restoration stalled. In 1988 the unfinished car – still with the body off – was sold by the first owne
