Jaguar Mk2 values: 3.8 over 3.4 over 2.4, the restomod premium, and a market back to 2010 prices

The Mk2 is the Jaguar saloon the sale rooms see most, and Jaguar Mk2 values are a British story rather than an export one: 867 recorded sales since 2002, about 75 a year lately, at a median of £18,000, with the middle half between £10,800 and £26,500. Seven in ten of the cars offered find a buyer. The spread runs from a £700 project to £262,000 for a car with competition history, and most of the record is the ordinary 3.4 and 3.8 saloon, restored once, sold in Britain to someone who remembers one.

The Jaguar Mk2 model guide covers the engines, the Coombs cars, the run-out 240 and 340 and what to check. This page is about the money, and about a market that has given back a decade of gains.

3.8 over 3.4 over 2.4

The variant table on this page puts figures on the order everyone knows. The 3.8, 370 recorded sales, has a median of £21,500; the 3.4, 195 sales, £17,300; the 2.4, 96 sales, £9,600. The run-out cars of 1967 to 1969 follow their engines, the 340 at £18,500 and the 240 at £9,000. What the figures correct is the folklore that a 3.8 is worth double a 3.4: at the median the premium is a quarter, and it only opens toward double at the very top, where the best restored 3.8s reach £40,000 to £60,000 and the best 3.4s rarely pass £35,000. The 2.4 really is half the car in price, because its 120 bhp gives the Mk2 body a top speed under 100 mph and most buyers want the pace the shape promises.

Two things sit outside the standard order. The John Coombs cars, the Guildford dealer’s uprated 3.8s with their louvred bonnets, have a median of £56,800 across the six genuine ones in the record, with the Coombs replicas at £32,600. And the restomods: the Vicarage Mk2s, the British rebuilds of the 1990s with modern brakes, steering and transmissions, at £44,900, and the New Zealand-built Beacham cars with XJ running gear and interiors at £60,300. Each sells for the quality of its work and the completeness of its file. Above everything are the cars with competition history, and the record sale in the data, £262,000 in 2019, was for one that ran the Tour de France.

What moves the price of a Mk2

The body, and the Mk2’s body rusts like a 1960s Jaguar, which is to say everywhere that holds water: the sills, which are structural, the floors and the boot floor, the rear spring hangers, the front crossmember and the bottoms of the doors and wings. A car on sound sills with honest paint sits in the middle of its range; a car with filler in them is a project, because a full body restoration on a Mk2 costs more than most 3.4s are worth. The XK engine and the running gear are durable and well supported and move the price less, though a 3.8 with a documented rebuild carries its premium more confidently than one without.

Then specification. Manual-overdrive cars sell above automatics by a clear margin, power steering adds a little on the 3.8, wire wheels and an original colour add, and the later cars’ Ambla upholstery takes off against the earlier leather. A Heritage certificate, a long history file and a car that has stayed in one family for decades all add; mileage, on a saloon that has usually been restored, barely matters. Originality counts, but the Mk2 market is more forgiving of sensible upgrades than the E-Type’s: a five-speed gearbox or modern brakes on a car used for touring rarely hurts the price.

The slide back to 2010

The chart shows a car that rose with the 2010s boom and has given most of it back. The yearly median was £19,400 in 2010, £21,500 in 2017, £23,800 in 2020, and then £20,800 in 2022, £17,800 in 2023 and £12,600 in 2024, with a partial recovery to £16,500 in 2025. Restated in today’s money, the Mk2 is cheaper now than it was in 2010, and about 45 per cent below its 2020 peak.

The usual two causes apply. More ordinary and project cars reach the online auctions each year, and a median built on those is lower than one built on catalogued cars. And the market for 1960s saloons has softened as its buyers have aged, more sharply than the sports-car market, because a saloon is a car people buy out of memory rather than for driving. The good 3.8s with history have held up; the tired 3.4s and the 2.4s have not, and a single week in July 2026 saw a 3.8 sell for £10,400 and a 2.4 for £10,600 at British sale rooms, figures that would have bought a project ten years ago.

Where Mk2s change hands

The Mk2 is a British car in a British record. The sale rooms of the Midlands, the north and the south-west, the online platforms and the specialists all trade them, and a single week in July 2026 produced five sales between £5,400 and £16,800, all in Britain. The Coombs cars, the restomods and the competition cars pass through the international houses and the specialists at prices above the auction range. Whether a recorded price includes the buyer’s premium varies by sale, which is one more reason to read the usual range rather than any single result.

Insuring, restoring, selling

For an agreed-value policy a good 3.8 belongs in the upper half of its range and a restored one above it; a 3.4 around its median; a 2.4 at its own figure. On restoration the Mk2 is unforgiving: a body-off rebuild costs more than any standard car is worth, and only a 3.8 with history recovers a fraction of it. If you are selling, a manual-overdrive 3.8 in an original colour sells itself, a 3.4 sells on its sills, and the best photograph is of the underside, not the walnut.

Related

The Mk2 shares its XK engine with the E-Type, whose sold prices sit three times higher, and its saloon market with the XJ6 that eventually replaced it, which sells for a quarter of the price. For the decade, see British classic cars of the 1960s. For how all the figures on this site are compiled, see what classic cars sell for.