mguar - enlighten me with your Jaguar knowledge.

I'm interested in Straight-6 Jaguars like I said in the V12 post.

I worked on an 2000 XJ sedan the other day and I'm interested in the car.

More specifically I'm looking at the mid to late 90's XJ6 sedan.

I'm seeing several 120-160k XJ6s for between $1500 - $3000 on Craigslist.

What are major issues with this era of XJ6? Engine? Transmission? Reliability in general?

I imagine parts are pretty expensive?

Just a couple I found:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/cto/2749604954.html

http://chicago.craigslist.org/wcl/cto/2763866321.html

SBF, you can get a lot of very detailed DD Jaguar stuff from Jaguar World magazine (online at the creatively named jaguar-world dot com), including routine maintenance stuff, repairs/upgrades, and very comprehensive buyers' guides for most of the models.

In reply to mguar:

Thanks for your honesty, I thought your knowledge seeped into the DD vehicles. Not gonna be racing, but what you know on the V12s is knowledgable.

In reply to Stealthtercel:

Thanks for the info. I'm just curious about the cars and if they are semi reliable or not.

IMHO they are about on par with the reliability and cost of maintenance of Mercedes and BMWs of that era. Also as far as parts cost (if I remember right), they share some parts (switches, window motors and that type of thing) with Fords so if you shop around you can get the same part in a Ford box instead of a Jag box for half price.

IIRC, the '95 and newer cars got a lot of help from Ford with electrical systems and such, which I would think would be more reliable in a sense.

I actually got some good news from my dads Jaguar Mechanic friend. He told me that the '90 and newer XJs are good cars. The '95-'97 models I'm looking at he said are probably the best of the '90s models.

He said that the only thing he know was a major issue for those years were the coils on the coil-over-plug setup. They would just fail and need to be replaced.

He also said that they don't have the electrical gadget gremlins that Mercedes and BMW had. Ford have really helped out on that. He said for a reliable luxury car, that was the car to go after because they have very few issues.

That kind of intrigues me more. Maybe I'll have an XJ6 by next spring.

And now I'm off to craigslist to look for Jaguars. I didn't even know I liked Jaguars

AND they're cheap? Curses....

In reply to thatsnowinnebago:

They are cheap, but the ones that are really cheap are the ones to watch out for. They're just like any other used car, you got to go down the checklist and makes sure its ok. I was told to see if the owner has service records, even if it's just jiffy lube receipts to show oil changes.

After doing a major Craigslist search last night, there are descent ones for $2000 and there are real nice ones for $4000-$6000. $3k is my budget, so I'm gonna keep an eye out. There is one out in Boston for $2500 that supposedly has all service records and has 98k on the odo. Tempting, but I don't have the money right now.

mguar - were you on this forum years ago? I vaguely remember someone who seems to have a lot of the same background, who disappeared at some point. If you are who I'm remembering, the FMV rule at the challenge came about because of you, as you had some ancient pile of scrap that you bought for only $100 or so, but decades ago, and wanted to know if the $100 buy in was still applicable.

Goin Monday to look at an 1100 dollar xjs. Lord help me...

Mguar has been imparting some of his knowledge on how to go fast for cheap. Makes me want one more