Jagbreakers to the Rescue!

It was always going to be a pretty crazy day.
I planned to drive up to Huntingdon to collect news editor, Keith Adam, from our sister publication, Classic Car Weekly, from where we'd travel together to Manchester. I'd then go on to Leeds from where I would catch a train to head up to Scotland. All in one day. And if you thought that sounded crazy, wait until you hear the reason for the trip to Manchester.

Having done it twice before, Keith Adams has signed up once again for the annual Staples to Naples Rally (S2N), an endurance car event where participants have to drive down to southern Italy in a car costing £100 or less. This year's event takes place in September, and Keith's previous carriages for this whacky adventure have been an Austin Allegro and Lada Riva. So, when the topic of the run came up again, we kicked around the idea of doing it in a Jaguar, for no other reason than it should be a half decent story for both Jaguar World Monthly and Classic Car Weekly. And, after a bit of scouting around, we found ourselves knocking on the door of Jagbreakers.org (tel: +44 (0) 161 7234630), a long-established car breaking business that happens to specialise in Jaguars.

Current proprietor Ben Hughes has invested a small fortune recently bringing the site into line with legislative requirements, so it is well geared up to dismantle any modern car; but a long-held passion for Jaguars, which stems from Ben's father, has led down the specialist road. Consequently, it has probably one of the country's finest array of Jaguar parts. Having explained to Ben what we needed, he leapt to it and found an XJ40 3.6 that was too good for the scrapper but, by the same token, was in dire need of someTLC- and we could have it for the maximum spend limit of £100.

So, having arranged to have my XJ40 serviced, I pointed my car north to collect Keith and then on to inspect this £100 Forty. It would be a long drive and one incredible waste of time if it had proved to be a flea-pit of a car. Fortunately, Jagbreakers' eye for a bargain did not let us down, as our S2N, XJ40 is surprisingly straight. Certainly, it's rough around the edges but it's the ideal candidate for our rally.

It's a pre-facelift 1989 model, so it's got the 3.6-litre AJ6 engine as opposed to the slightly torquier 4.0-litre, as found in my car, and it's got the 'Tokyo by night' instrument dial pack. Were it not for its notorious unreliability, I'd actually prefer this type of instrumentation. It's clean looking and the digital displays are so very 1980s- a good thing in my book!

In addition to the erroneously flashing dash, there were other early Forty flaws exhibited by this car, such as a sticky fuel filler cap and broken rear door handles. Oh and there's some welding that needs doing on the sill up near the front left wheel. Despite this, it has an MoT until October and I decent tyres that are wrapped around some later Kiwi alloys first seen on the XJ40 Gold MK I limited editions. And did I say that it was a manual gearbox car? That, in my book, makes it even more desirable.