Jaguar XJS (1975-1996): the grand tourer that outlived its critics

The XJS asked Jaguar’s buyers to accept something difficult: that the car replacing the E-Type would not be a sports car at all. Launched in 1975 into the teeth of an oil crisis, with a thirsty V12 and a shape nobody quite knew what to make of, it had every reason to fail. Instead it ran for twenty-one years, outsold the E-Type, and has aged into one of the most appreciated grand tourers of its era.

This is the guide to the XJS in all its forms. For the wider marque story, see the main classic Jaguar guide.

Not an E-Type replacement

The key thing to understand about the XJS is what it was meant to be. When the E-Type ended in 1974, Jaguar did not try to build another sports car. The XJS was conceived as a luxury grand tourer, a fast, refined, long-legged car for covering big distances in comfort, and it was built on a shortened version of the XJ6 saloon’s underpinnings. Its early styling came from Malcolm Sayer, the aerodynamicist behind the E-Type, who died in 1970 before the design was finished; it was completed in-house under Doug Thorpe. The distinctive rear sail panels, the “flying buttresses”, were Sayer’s, an aerodynamic feature rather than a leftover from some abandoned mid-engined plan.

Launched in September 1975, it arrived at the worst possible moment, just as fuel prices spiked, with a 5.3-litre V12 as its only engine. That it survived at all is a tribute to how good it was to drive.

The styling, and the 1991 facelift

The looks divided people from the start. After the E-Type, the long overhangs and the buttresses struck many as heavy and awkward, and the XJS spent years living down its own launch reviews. The turning point was partly time and partly the 1991 facelift, carried out under Ford ownership, which dropped the hyphen from the name and cleaned up the shape: a flush windscreen, a restyled and more rounded tail, and revised rear side windows that made the glass look larger and the buttresses less dominant. The facelifted shell was galvanised, which is one reason later cars survive better. Today the XJS is widely admired, and the late convertibles in particular are genuinely glamorous.

Engines: V12 and the six

The XJS launched with Jaguar’s 5.3-litre V12, the same smooth, near-silent engine that powered the XJ12 saloon. In 1981 it gained the High Efficiency, or HE, specification, which used a special cylinder head to raise compression and improve the V12’s notorious thirst, the main benefit being economy rather than extra power. In 1992 the V12 grew to 6.0 litres.

From 1983 a six-cylinder option transformed the car’s prospects: the 3.6-litre AJ6, later enlarged to 4.0 litres in 1991, gave the XJS a cheaper-to-run, nearly-as-smooth alternative that broadened its appeal enormously. The six launched with a five-speed manual gearbox, a rarity in a car otherwise sold mostly as an automatic. Most V12s used a three-speed automatic, later a four-speed, and a manual V12 is very rare indeed.

A word on the figures: the V12’s quoted outputs vary with the measuring standard and the market, and the highest power numbers, around 333 bhp, belong to the hot JaguarSport XJR-S rather than the standard car, so treat any single headline figure with care.

Body styles: coupe, cabriolet, convertible

The XJS began as a fixed-head coupe, a 2+2 with small rear seats. In 1983 came the XJ-SC cabriolet, a targa-style car with a fixed roll-over structure and removable roof panels rather than a full soft-top, offered first with the six and later the V12. The car most people want, though, is the full convertible of 1988, with a proper folding roof and a much stiffer shell, which was a strong seller and remains the most desirable body style today.

TWR and the racing XJ-S

The XJS earned real competition credibility. Tom Walkinshaw Racing campaigned the V12 in the European Touring Car Championship from 1982, and in 1984 Walkinshaw took the drivers’ title and the team won the Spa 24 Hours, Jaguar’s first 24-hour win since Le Mans in 1957. It was an unlikely competition car, a big luxury GT turned racer, and it gave the road cars a hard edge of motorsport history they wear well.

Buying an XJS now

The XJS reputation for complexity and cost is real, but mostly for the V12. The six-cylinder cars are far cheaper and simpler to own. On any XJS, rust is the structural concern: check the jacking points, the floors and the seatbelt-mounting areas, the sills, the bottoms of the front wings where they meet the sills, the rear wheelarches, the lower rear wings and valances, the doors, and especially the windscreen scuttle, a tricky and expensive area to repair properly.

On the V12, the cooling system is everything. The radiator silts up if the coolant is not changed regularly, so brown, neglected coolant is a reason to walk away, and the complex ignition and fuelling need to be right. The desirability ladder runs from the rare early pre-HE and manual cars, prized for originality, through the better-driving HE, to the most usable facelift cars, with the V12 convertibles at the top. The trap is the same as on every big Jaguar: a cheap car with deferred maintenance and hidden corrosion is no bargain.

What it is worth

The XJS spans a wide range. Projects start around £5,000, usable cars including V12 convertibles sit around £10,000 to £15,000, and the best late, low-mileage examples reach £20,000 to £30,000. Good V12 convertibles and the early pre-HE cars carry the strongest premiums, while the bottom of the market is rough, rusty six-cylinder coupes. The six trades below the equivalent V12 but is cheaper to own. Auction data and the price guides confirm the pattern, with condition, the state of the cooling and fuel systems, and bodywork the decisive factors.

Related

The XJS is the grand tourer in the classic Jaguar range and one of the defining British classic cars of the 1980s. It followed the E-Type, shared its V12 and its underpinnings with the XJ6, and went on to outlast both.

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