1992 Jaguar Sovereign - rust and more welding!

[dbdb]

I thought I would start a thread about my car, a 1992 Jaguar Sovereign. It is a 1993 model year car which was long ago was my late dad’s company car.

These late XJ40s had a new electrical system and many alterations were made to the body to accommodate the V12 engine. In some ways they are a hybrid of the XJ40 and later X300 (which was based on the XJ40 anyway.)

Here is a photo of it on a narrow country lane in the mid 1990s:



My dad kept cars a long time and about ten years ago when it came to trade the car in for another one, very low offers were made by the dealers. He knew I liked the car so he gave it to me.

The photos are more recent; I didn’t get a digital camera until a couple of years ago.
This is from 2009.


Taken this summer:



The body needs some work doing to it. The electrical problems which bedevilled the early 3.6 litre cars don’t affect the late XJ40, but they still rust! The sill end is in poor condition on the right side, as is the wing. I will be taking it to Dave and Gray in Leigh to fix soon.














The twenty fifth anniversary of the XJ40 was celebrated at the Black Sheep brewery in May. I drove down in my Sovereign through a thunderstorm and I was pleased it didn't leak.

Jaguar brought the last XJ40 made. It was last on the road in 1994 when it was exhibited at a German trade fair and driven back. It was the only time the car has been driven on the road and Jaguar needed to fit a new set of tyres for the trip to the meet.



David

Edited to reduce the number of photos since some were very similar to each other.

[eternaloptimist]

Blimey, that's clean - can't recall the last time I saw an XJ40 looking that good. Credit to you

[Graham]

Had a 1994 Gold a while back great cars enjoy

[xbo11ox]

Mmmm, lovely!!! I fancy one of these.

[neox]

Lovely and clean, just needs slamming with banded wheels

[dbdb]

Aug 14, 2011 8:31:38 GMT eternaloptimist said:

Blimey, that's clean - can't recall the last time I saw an XJ40 looking that good. Credit to you

Thanks for that! I love the car and have always looked after it and my late father also looked after it very carefully. It has also only done 97,000 miles which isn't much for a car which will be 19 years old in a couple of months.
I do wonder though whether if I had washed it less it wouldn't be as rusty!

Aug 14, 2011 9:04:03 GMT Graham said:

Had a 1994 Gold a while back great cars enjoy

I'd guess that was also a 3.2? - The 4 litre "Gold" is super rare.
They really are good cars, and very underrated I think.

David

[dbdb]

Aug 14, 2011 10:38:28 GMT xbo11ox said:

Mmmm, lovely!!! I fancy one of these.

You should get one! they're great cars and really don't feel or drive like anything else.

They seem to have a really bad reputation for unreliability for some reason, but in my experience it's only justified on the early 2.9/3.6 litre litre cars with the digital dash. The digidash cars can be reliable and are very cool, if they work. If they don't though, fault finding can enough to make a grown man cry! There is at least one regular poster on here who hates them!

Later cars have completely different electrics and are more reliable than most cars. Mine has only needed 1 new relay in 18 years, nothing else - not even a light bulb.

Rust is a problem for them as on a lot of older cars (the XJ40 is a very old design) but there's nothing to frighten a man who will tackle a Biturbo!!

The XJ40 couldn't be much cheaper either. Even mine which with a bit of work could be really excellent, will be worth less than a grand. It is difficult to spend as much as £2,000 on an XJ40.

David

[dbdb]

Aug 14, 2011 15:59:09 GMT neox said:

Lovely and clean, just needs slamming with banded wheels

I won't be lowering it, but the '40 does look pretty good dropped a bit. They're really quite low as a standard car though - far lower than anything else of their type.

Jaguar made a really beautiful chrome hubcap for the late XJ40 but they're very rare unfortunately. I spent a long time trying to find a set which I could buy, before giving up!
This is what they're like.


David

[r1ch130]

Stunning condition and gorgeous car!

My friend Carl has one and I had a drive the other week; really really smooth and just wafts along. His is a 3.2 XJ6, bit a Sovereign but still nice.

Your's puts his to shame though lol

To be fair, he bought his for £400 as spares or repairs and he's hardly had to do anything to it. Needed a couple of weld patch's for the MOT and that was it! The engine is perfect on his, although, no where near as good to look at as your's!

Very nice, very very nice. I've always fancied one of these as a weekend cruiser, some luxury for those special occasions.

This shape is a lot nicer than the one which followed too, in my opinion. Very classy


P.S. do you have any difficulty in obtaining new tires with them being the metric wheel diameter?

My friend had a lot of hassle with more tire firms telling him "you've got no chance", which wasn't very helpful!

He got some part worn ones in the end, but thought I would ask so I can pass the info on. Thanks.

[Rob]

Fantastic condition Jaguar a real gem of a car top job keeping it in that condition
Had one of these in the past, it was allway mistook for a jaguar, they would say didn't know jag built a hatch back , l would have point out it's not a jag and it's not a hatchback!

Sorry about the poor picture only one l could find on google!

[dbdb]

Aug 15, 2011 12:40:44 GMT r1ch130 said:

Stunning condition and gorgeous car!

My friend Carl has one and I had a drive the other week; really really smooth and just wafts along. His is a 3.2 XJ6, bit a Sovereign but still nice.

Your's puts his to shame though lol

To be fair, he bought his for £400 as spares or repairs and he's hardly had to do anything to it. Needed a couple of weld patch's for the MOT and that was it! The engine is perfect on his, although, no where near as good to look at as your's!

Very nice, very very nice. I've always fancied one of these as a weekend cruiser, some luxury for those special occasions.

This shape is a lot nicer than the one which followed too, in my opinion. Very classy


P.S. do you have any difficulty in obtaining new tires with them being the metric wheel diameter?

My friend had a lot of hassle with more tire firms telling him "you've got no chance", which wasn't very helpful!

He got some part worn ones in the end, but thought I would ask so I can pass the info on. Thanks.

Thanks for your comments!
They make a good weekend cruiser and rust aside, they don’t go wrong much at all. The engines go forever and the gearbox is the ZF4HP22 which does good service in many BMWs. They’re really not bad on petrol either, for a big car anyway. I get 23-ish running round and close to 30 on a motorway run. Not too good in the city though, more like late teens.

I prefer the XJ40 to the X300 as well, though I’d say the X300 is generally more popular at the moment. The ’40 is much nicer inside.

My car doesn’t have the metric ‘Teardrop’ wheels, but the 15” ‘Teardrops' – which look almost the same, it must be said.

The 220/65 VR 390 tyres are still available, but only from specialist tyre suppliers. They are horrifically expensive. Longstone tyres stock them at £239+VAT.
www.longstonetyres.co.uk/search?searchMethod=searchTerm&searchScope=site&searchUrl=search&sortBy=Diameter&category=&searchTerm=1283&x=20&y=13

Most people switch to the later 16” XJ40 wheels for the very wide range of 225/60 VR 16 tyres which are available and are not expensive.

My 15” Teardrops take 225/65 VR 15 tyres; it is an odd size and the only supplier is Pirelli with the P4000. They’re getting expensive too but I like them so chose to stay with 15” wheels. I guess a more sensible thing to do would have been to switch to 16” wheels. They’re cheap on Ebay!

David

[dbdb]

Aug 15, 2011 14:32:19 GMT Rob said:

Fantastic condition Jaguar a real gem of a car top job keeping it in that condition
Had one of these in the past, it was allway mistook for a jaguar, they would say didn't know jag built a hatch back , l would have point out it's not a jag and it's not a hatchback!

Sorry about the poor picture only one l could find on google!

Thanks!

I love the Gamma, but do you know I hadn't noticed how similar they are to the XJ40 at the front until now! Amazing! - Well at least I am consistent in my taste... ;D

David

[tali]

The blue-ish/grey interior seems rare as most are iirc oatmeal ?
I recall the rare chrome hubcaps - Daimler Majestic ? as light green one reguarly went past my house many years ago
Teen mpg in town is not too bad as I've had numerous 4 cylinder , sub 2 litre cars that never managed past 20mpg

[Torquesport]

Aug 14, 2011 15:59:09 GMT neox said:

Lovely and clean, just needs slamming with banded wheels

Perhaps some shoddily applied matt black paint too?

[dbdb]

Aug 16, 2011 22:17:53 GMT tali said:

The blue-ish/grey interior seems rare as most are iirc oatmeal ?
I recall the rare chrome hubcaps - Daimler Majestic ? as light green one reguarly went past my house many years ago
Teen mpg in town is not too bad as I've had numerous 4 cylinder , sub 2 litre cars that never managed past 20mpg

My old Sov is surprisingly frugal on petrol – much more economical than the Nissan 200SX I had before the Jag.

The interior is called Savile grey, but it is a kind of blue-ish grey. I don’t think it is particularly rare on the XJ40, though the blue piping isn’t too common. It is perhaps more often seen on earlier cars than mine.

You couldn’t get oatmeal on the XJ40; I think that was an X300 colour. I would say most XJ40s came with Doeskin, Savile grey or magnolia leather. Magnolia is particularly popular on late cars.

The very rare colour is parchment – a strange green leather which is actually very nice. Red and blue are also fairly rare, as is black leather. Hardly any XJ40s come with a black interior.

The Jaguar or Daimler Majestic was the long wheelbase version coachbuilt for Jaguar at Coventry Aerospace and came with the same wheels as the standard wheel base version.
The chrome hubcaps were fitted to Insignia trim cars which had a very high level of finish with special colour combinations and could be painted a one-off colour of the customer’s choice.

At this time, the specification of Jaguars wasn’t fixed though, and the customer could have pretty much anything they wanted provided they could pay for it. Jaguar specification was very flexible and not tied to the brochure and anomalies in specification are very common on the XJ40.


David

[dbdb]

Aug 17, 2011 2:09:58 GMT Torquesport said:

Aug 14, 2011 15:59:09 GMT neox said:

Lovely and clean, just needs slamming with banded wheels

Perhaps some shoddily applied matt black paint too?

LOL!!

Do you reckon I should apply it with a mini roller for the full stippled effect, or with a brush?
I'm thinking more than one brand of paint applied on different days would get the subtle yet strangely quite noticeable difference in colour and texture between the panels... ;D

David

[mk2polobloke]

That's a lovely condition Jaguar you have there David. The interior and engine bay look exceptional.
A friend of mine had a '88 4 litre Sovereign in exactly the same colour as yours. The ride, handling and the interior comfort were as I expected - superb. It was the performance that really struck me though, for such a large luxury car it could really get a move on when required - all without drama.
Keep us updated.
Cheers,
Richard.

[dbdb]

Thanks mk2polobloke. They do go well, especially the 3.6 and 4 litre versions. I hope to have a few things to update with eventually, rather than just these photos. No "Retro-rides" thread is complete without some welding!

David

[hamps]

I want one of these lovely cars, and yours is stunning mate Your Dad would be proud!

[task]

Beautiful Jag there, a real head turner!