After Ford bought Jaguar in 1989, the bosses in Dearborn finally got their hands on a storied luxury brand that would be taken more seriously than Lincoln
outside of North America. A fresh infusion of dollars worked wonders to improve the quality of Jaguar’s engineering and assembly, and development of a modern DOHC V8 engine immediately took a high priority. That engine made its debut in the 1997 Jaguar XK8, then went into the engine compartment of the very first production Jaguar sedan to get factory V8 power: the XJ8
. Today’s Junkyard Gem is one of that first generation of XJ8, found crashed in a Colorado self-service boneyard.
stretching back to the British Leyland era, Ford’s money ensured that it would be built better than its predecessors had been during the cash-strapped bad old days.
Exterior styling wasn’t much changed from that of the XJ300.
Inside, the old XJ40 dash finally went away for good, replaced by a design more appropriate for the new century.
Jaguar couldn’t compete with BMW and Mercedes-Benz on leading-edge chassis engineering, but its heritage was hard to top.
The engine is a 4.0-liter DOHC V8 with variable valve timing, rated at 290 horsepower and 290 pound-feet. Ford should get credit for funding Jaguar’s own engine instead of simply stuffing some member of its Modular V8 family
in here. If you wanted a manual transmission in your XJ8, the answer was a firm no.
This car’s interior is a bit grimy but appears to have been in nice enough condition when it arrived here. What happened?
This happened. On a near-quarter-century-old European luxury sedan, body damage like this usually results in the insurance company declaring the car totaled.
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