Junkyard Find: 1987 Jaguar XJ6
Jaguar built the Series III Jaguar XJ for the 1979 through 1992 model years, and so I’ve been seeing these cars in the big self-service vehicle graveyards since, well, the middle 1980s. They still show up in such yards to this day, as long-neglected project cars get swept up in yard- and driveway-clearance projects, but I’ll only document those that are particularly interesting.
A very clean British Racing Green XJ6 from the last model year for the Series III’s straight-six engine certainly qualifies, so here we go!
As we can see from the tags on the sliced-off California license plate (I found this car in a San Francisco Bay Area yard), Barry’s ’87 Jag was a driver not so long ago. My first guess for the junkyardization of Barry’s Jag is that something expensive failed in the electrical system and Barry decided to cut his losses. My second guess: Barry couldn’t get the car to pass California’s draconian emissions testing (probably due to the aforementioned electrical system causing some sensor or solenoid to behave erratically) and he decided to cut his losses. Third guess is just an accumulation of unpaid parking tickets and the visit from a tow truck not summoned by Barry.
You could still buy a Series III XJ after the 1987 model year, but only with a V12 engine. Jaguar put plenty of sixes in the subsequent XJs, of course.
This interior is damn near perfect, aside from a bit of lacquer cracking on the wood paneling. I hope some Bay Area XJ owner grabbed the seats and door panels out of this car prior to its date with the cold steel jaws of The Crusher.
Not many miles on it. Barry really babied his ’87.
Great deals on used Jags!
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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This is a piker's car. If you really wanted understated class, you bought a Rover P5B
Grab this now and set it aside for an EV conversion several years from now.