Jaguar World Magazine X300 XJ Buying Guide March 2011 Back Issue

When does a classic car become
a classic car? It’s a question that has been
posed and debated many times before, and for
which there probably is no defi nitive answer –
but what I can say for sure is that, to my mind,
Jaguar’s X300 XJ can certainly be considered
to have classic status.
Yes, even the youngest of these cars is
not yet 14 years old, but enthusiasm for this
Jaguar amongst those in the know has been
growing for some time now, and it’s easy to see
why. With curves very reminiscent of the early
Series XJs – and intentionally so – its low and
sleek looks continue to win many admirers and,
though those same looks are shared by its X308
successor, the earlier car side-steps many of the
reliability issues that blighted the fi rst V8 XJ. In
fact, if you plump for one of the AJ16-powered
straight-six X300s, not only will you be buying
a car with a deserved reputation for being near
bullet-proof mechanically, but one that’s also
relatively easy to care for yourself should you be
handy with a spanner.
Of course, the
X300 shape didn’t
only house the last
straight-six engine built
by Jaguar, it was also the
last model to be built with the mighty
V12, by that time in 6.0-litre form. And that too
is a very strong engine if properly maintained –
just don’t ever overheat one!
In addition to its elegant proportions and
mechanical robustness, the X300 boasts a few
other attributes that add to its classic status.
With 92,038 examples built in total (including
Daimler variants), they don’t exactly qualify as
rare cars in a broad sense, but in steel-bodied
XJ terms they are just that – Jaguar even built
more examples of the Series 1. However,
the X300’s trump card is its affordability. The
example in our buyer’s guide on page 22 is a
65,000-mile full-history Sovereign spec 4.0-litre
car, and it’s for sale through an independent
specialist for just £3,750. The cliché ‘that’s a lot
of car for the money’ has never been truer.