Junkyard Find: 1992 Jaguar XJ6 Vanden Plas Majestic

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
Jaguar XJ40s are so plentiful in U-Wrench-It yards that I don’t even notice them as I wander around searching for the elusive Suzuki Equator (no luck there, yet). In fact, none of the Jags I’ve photographed prior to today’s Junkyard Find have been XJ40s, but we’ve got a one-of-121-built super-rarity here in Denver: a genuine Vanden Plas Majestic!
I must admit that I’d never heard of the Majestic before spotting this car, and my first thought that that I was looking at aftermarket badges sold by Manny, Moe, and/or Jack.
However, the MAJESTIC badging is everywhere in this car, so I realized I had a factory-built special edition car in front of me. The stretched wheelbase was a clue, too.
Determining the cause of junkyardization proved easy enough. It’s a shame for a car like this to end its career in some depressingly everyday crash with, I dunno, a Chrysler Cirrus.
The El Cheapo window-film job indicates that the final owner may not have been quite as wealthy as the car’s original purchaser.
The list price of the ’92 Majestic came to $59,500, or just over $108,000 in 2019 dollars. The 1992 Lexus LS400 went for $42,200, but didn’t have quite as swanky an interior.
The 4.0-liter straight-six made 223 horsepower, which resulted in leisurely acceleration for this two-tonner. Not that anyone bought this car for fast driving, of course.
This must have been one of the last American-market car ads to emphasize the ashtray.
If you like these junkyard posts, you can reach all 1600+ right here at the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand!
Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • EGSE EGSE on Feb 04, 2019

    A close-up of the pod to the right of the steering wheel would've been interesting to see what all those buttons are for. Murilee's junkyard series is one of my favorite reads on TTAC.

    • See 2 previous
    • Jagboi Jagboi on Feb 04, 2019

      @Lie2me Cruise was made by Hella, it seemed pretty durable.

  • Superdessucke Superdessucke on Feb 05, 2019

    That half shaft holding up the hood of the Majestic is so undignified!

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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