What’s big, red, and eats Audis?

This, apparently:

This is a 2000 Jaguar XJR, which has recently found its way onto my driveway. This photo was taken as it came off the trailer, having been covered in the best of Arizona and New Mexico on its journey here to sunny San Antonio. The colour is an interesting one – Jaguar call it “carnival red”, but I’m not sure what kind of carnival they’re referring to. The guy selling the car described it as “merlot”, and that’s perhaps a little more apt.

I had to sell the XJ8 last November, and I missed it rather a lot – which is why this one has now appeared and will (hopefully) be driven the 2,100 miles back home later this month.

98-01 XJs have a couple of big flaws that mean they’re ridiculously cheap for what they are. The first is the cylinder liners – Jaguar (along with BMW, VW, and a few others) used Nikasil liners from 98 for about three years.. and it turns out they don’t like high-sulphur fuel very much. Jaguar also decided that they’d save about 50g of weight by making the timing chain tensioners plastic rather than metal.. so when they disintegrate, they disintegrate quite catastrophically. Both of these “issues” were addressed later in the run of the X308 Jag; updated tensioners are available to fix that problem, and any Jag that’s still running with good compression at 12 years old is likely not going to suffer liner problems anytime soon.. in fact, a Nikasil-engined Jag that’s lasted ’till now will likely keep going for a very long time indeed.

If you’re a fan of Internet-based paranoia, you’ll know that the other well-publicised failure in these cars is the transmission. The XJ8 has a ZF-sourced gearbox that eats A-drums for breakfast. The fact that they’re marked as “sealed for life”… and consequently no one changes the fluid or filters.. is nothing to do with it. Oh no. The big problem with this flaw is that there’s no warning of imminent failure. It’s just CLUNKmmmfmmmfmmmffthpppbt.

The XJR has a different, Mercedes-sourced box which is supposedly much more reliable.. but this remains to be seen!