Junkyard Gem: 1994 Jaguar XJ12

Whereas Individuals have been in a position to purchase new Jaguar two-doors with V12 engines beneath their bonnets from 1971 throughout 1996, availability of latest Jaguar 12-cylinder sedans was a lot spottier right here. The Collection 1 and Collection 2 XJ12s have been bought right here from the 1973 via 1979 mannequin years, after which there was a grim Jaguar V12 four-door drought right here all the best way till the 1994 mannequin yr. This is a type of very uncommon felines, present in a Northern California boneyard in April.

Jaguar had developed the XJ40 successor to the Collection 3 XJ over an agonizingly protracted interval that spanned the British Leyland period of the early Seventies via the primary manufacturing vehicles being proven to the world in 1986. The XJ40 first appeared in the US as a 1988 mannequin. The next yr, the Ford Motor Firm purchased Jaguar.

The engineers in Coventry struggled to design a viable V12-engined XJ40 for years, giving it the XJ81 designation. In the end, the XJ81 was revealed to the motoring world in 1993… simply previous to the alternative of the XJ40 by the XJ300 for the 1995 mannequin yr. All the XJ81s bought in the US—simply over 1,500 of them in all—have been 1994 fashions.

This junkyard supplied a bonanza of uncommon European iron once I stopped by on that chilly spring morning. Situated inside just a few rows of this one-year-only XJ81 have been a Volkswagen Phaeton and a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. The yard additionally had a working Peugeot 504 on the market of their “builders” part, and I will admit I used to be very tempted by it.

The April 1994 manufacturing date signifies that this is likely one of the final members of the XJ40/XJ81 household to be constructed (although Jaguar continued to make use of platforms derived from the XJ40 till the X350a arrived as 2003 fashions).

This 6.0-liter engine was an excruciatingly tight match on this engine compartment (there are semi-credible tales that the XJ40’s engine compartment was made so slim as a sneaky office-politics technique of stopping British Leyland from putting in Rover V8s in Jaguars), and dealing on it should be a mechanic’s nightmare. Output was 301 horsepower and 336 pound-feet. In the meantime, Mercedes-Benz’s V12 was rated at 389 horsepower and 420 pound-feet, whereas BMW’s V12 had 296 horsepower and 332 pound-feet.

The MSRP for this automobile was $73,200 for the dual-airbag model (and we are able to see that each airbags have been deployed on this automobile’s career-ending crash). That quantities to $151,889 in 2023 {dollars}.

That value was fairly good in comparison with that of the 1993 BMW 750iL, which price $83,950 ($174,195 at present) and the $130,300 1993 Mercedes-Benz S600 sedan ($270,371 now), particularly once you have a look at the Jag’s gentlemanly wood-and-leather inside.

This automobile seems to have been in good condition previous to the crash that bent its body and customarily twisted all of the bodywork.

The XJ12 returned to America on the Ford-centric X300/X305 platform for 1995, with XJ12 gross sales right here terminating after 1996.

Jaguar has a design philosophy… that does not change with the wind.