When last heard from, I was british-carless after selling my old '66
Daimler 2.5L V8 saloon (Jag MkII clone), wandering around aimlessly and
blathering on about Post Jaguar Shock. The situation was grim. It was
also becoming painfully clear that our little experiment of running just
one car, even one as volumous as The Warwagon, our Large Swedish Troop
Transport, was raising havoc with our schedules. A second car was
needed and, with the kids, it had to have room for 5. After talking it
over and looking around a bit, both Anne and I agreed that we really
liked the curvacious series III (79-'87) Jaguar XJ-6's. A Mark II Jag
would be the backup choice if no XJ's panned out.
The search was on.... I watched the ads in the Denver papers for a
couple weeks to get a feel for the current market. The XJ-6's closest
to what we would be able to afford were mid-80's models with 90-100K
miles on them. Then I dug out an old ad which I had kept from last
winter for a 1981 Daimler Sovereign down in Denver.
Daimlers of this era are essentially series III Jaguar XJ-6's with a
slightly different trim package. Since Mercedes-Benz holds the rights
to the Daimler trade name in the US, Jaguar imports these to the US as
Jaguar Sovereign or Vanden Plas models. I was somewhat leary of this
one since it was an '81 (it wasn't until '83 that Jaguar finally started
improving their build quality). But, I thought that it would be cool to
have another Daimler, so I called to see if he still had it. The fellow
was rather surprised to have this call come from out of the blue, but,
yes, he still had it and, yes, he was still interested in selling it.
He went on to explain that it was a euro-spec car which had been
imported from Belgium and that he had owned it since 1984. It was DOT
approved and had been retro-fitted with cats and the proper US emissions
hardware. They were selling it because they had too many cars and this
was the one that they didn't drive much. But, they were just about to
leave on a 10 day vacation.
Two weeks later, he was showing Anne and I into his garage to check the
beast out. Since time was short for all of us, it would be just a
visual look over and a drive later if I was still interested. I looked
it over, it had a winter's coat of dust on it, there was no rust, a few
dings, some of the stitching had come undone in the seats, it would
eventually need a paint job and new tires. It had 52K miles on the
odometer, he always kept it garaged, didn't drive it in the winter or
smoke in it and everything worked except the AC and the cruise control.
I was happy to see that it was left hand drive (the RHD of our first
Daimler was fun for awhile, but, in the long run, it was a pain) and
that it had the large European headlights with wipers (US XJ-6's used
ugly chrome fillers on the outboard headlights to make all 4 headlamps
the same size). The wood was in better shape than most I've seen and,
aside from the loose stitching, the leather was healthy. We pulled it
out into the sunshine and I listened to it idle quietly and smoothly.
I wasn't too thrilled about the color, a metallic dark cinnamon brown,
but otherwise, both Anne and I really liked it (the Daimler vs BMW 735
article in the Sep/Oct 1993 Jaguar World reviews the exact twin of this
car). He had taken extremely good care of it mechanically, producing a
large folder of documentation showing that everything on my long list of
things to watch out for in XJ-6's had already been dealt with. It also
sounded like he was, well, just bored with it. Remembering the old
adage that "If the seller isn't insulted by your offer, then you
probably paid too much.", I got the negotiations started with a low-ball
offer, contingent on it passing a road test. To my surprise, he didn't
reject it immediately. Instead, he mulled it over for awhile, and, to
my utter amazement, he accepted it. Yikes!! Now I'm really going to
have to really look it over closely for problems.
A few days later, we took it out and drove it. Other than a slight
shimmy from an unbalanced tire, it drove just fine, exhibiting the same
pickup, cruising and breaking performance of other XJ-6's that I have
driven (At 3900 lbs, these pups are heavy; they get 17mpg, do 0-60mph in
10.0 secs, with a top speed of 127 mph). There were no untoward noises
from the engine or drive train, the gauges and dual-tank switch worked
as they should. It braked straight, exhibited healthy oil pressure and,
despite our current blazing 37 C summer temperatures, the temp gauge
stayed between 90-100 C on the highway. It was a keeper. As we
concluded the deal he began to get very wistful, talking about the
things they had done with it and how having it represented a period in
their life. I looked in the mirror to see him watching us drive off,
standing there for the longest time, holding a cashiers check and a bad
case of PJS.
In the week that we've had this car, I've really grown to like it. And
Anne just called to say that her upholstery guy can fix the stitching
for under $50. She also added that she really likes it, she feels more
at home in the V*lv* and would it be OK if we just considered the V*lv*
her car and the Daimler mine? No problem.....
/\ Lawrence Buja Climate and Global Dynamics Division
\_][ southern@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research
\_________________________Boulder,_Colorado___80307-3000__________
P.S. Does anyone have a set of European registration plates that they
would care to trade for a set of Colorado license plates? The
Colorado plates are green mountains on a white background with
white lettering.
+-------------------+
| /\ /\/\ /\ <---white area
|\/\/ \/ \/ \/\|
| ABC 1234 |
| <---green area
| COLORADO |
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|