A Big Cat From The Past

Of all the cars I have ever owned or driven during more than fifty years of driving, there is one car that stands out above all of the others, the Jaguar 5.3 XJ12.

I bought the Firenza Red 1976 model in 1985 for less than a thousand British pounds and soon found out why it was so cheap. Fuel consumption was about nine miles per gallon! That did not bother me too much as I lived only four miles from my workplace. The eight-mile round trip meant I was using less than a gallon a day, which for all the power and creature comforts on offer, I was more than happy to accept.

Classed as a luxury saloon, the car did not disappoint. I loved the seating position in those cream leather armchair seats. The wood veneer dash with a beautiful array of instruments and rocker switches was in my eyes an ergonomic delight. Best of all, that 5.3 lump was so whisper quiet it kept you wondering if you had actually fired it up. If the legendary Rolls Royce offered more refinement, it wasn’t by much.

Performance-wise, the car would pass anything except a garage, as they used to say. From a traffic light start the car just flew sylph-like with its magic carpet ride that made my friend’s Ford Escort XR3i feel like it was riding on square wooden wheels and tyres. Virtually all Escorts of that time had a reputation for a harsh, unforgiving ride. It was so bad my friend traded it in less than a year after he bought it brand spanking new.

The big cat weighed 1872 Kg and defied the belief that it weighed any more than a feather. The car went from 0-60 in ten seconds and had a top speed of 146 mph. Only once did I really give it the beans and hit 120 mph effortlessly on a motorway somewhere in the North. The only thing that stopped me from maxing the engine was a sudden pneumatic explosion which produced lots of blue/grey smoke and chunks of Micheline’s finest. I eased back on the throttle only to discover that the guilty party was in fact a truck ahead of me.

The XJ V12 engine was the very first to go into mass production and served Jaguar well. For a great many years, The Big Cat was the only mass-produced saloon car in the world to be offered with a V12 engine option. At the end of its production over 161,000 engines had been produced!

Sadly, the time came to let the sweet purring cat go. I changed my job and went to work fifty miles away. The fuel alone was taking a very large chunk of my otherwise excellent salary. There were other problems I had to contend with, one of which was not the car’s fault.

One day, whilst working on a corporate video shoot in Rochdale, the exhaust began to blow badly. I had no choice other than to book it into a local none franchised garage, which turned out to be a back street garage on the main road.

For just half an exhaust the price was over six hundred pounds! When I went to collect the car two days later I found the car parked up outside with its rear end facing a wall. I just paid my bill and drove off without having to engage in reverse. When I got home reverse could not be engaged. I instinctively knew what had happened, though I could not prove it.

The young apprentice at the garage had fired up the engine from cold and instead of waiting until the high choke went off to allow the engine revs to drop, shoved the selector into reverse and mashed the innards of the auto box. Then to cover up what he had done the garage parked the car in a way that I would not discover the problem until I had left the premises and driven sixty miles home.

I did speak to the garage owner but he simply told me to prove it. He claimed that mechanical failure could have been caused by me after I drove away from his grungy workshop. The repair to the auto box cost me one thousand pounds! Knowing the truth of the matter, that was a bitter pill to swallow.

Another problem I had to contend with was rusting rear valances underneath the bumper. They were going to cost an arm and a leg to repair and it made more sense to get out of the car and put the money towards its replacement.

These days Jaguar XJ12 values cover a wide spread, from 5K to 51K, depending on model, age, condition and mileage. Maybe one day if my boat comes in I’ll be tempted to seek one out. Until then, all I can do is indulge in happy memories of the Jag in its prime in days long passed.

Thumbnail Header Image By Riley from Christchurch, New Zealand.