1975 Jaguar XJ6 Coupe - Jay Leno's Garage

now their dynamics in this car pretty good we got all four windows open yet the window does not intrusive I can talk and have a conversation and you can hear me pretty clearly yeah that's great and you see how much pretty of the car looks with all four windows down well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage I'm gonna slow things down a little bit this week you know if you're a regular viewer you know we've been doing a lot of high horsepower supercars and stuff and sometimes it's fun to go back to my favorite class original and unrestored now this car is not totally original but it's been nicely maintained and then paint works been cleaned up a little bit but interior engine drivetrain is exactly it was back in 1975 this is a Jaguar XJ coupe I think it's one of the prettiest Jags ever made this is the six-cylinder model they also built the twelve similar to model but to me it just sits right it looks right especially with Blackwall tires sometimes through the American market they would put white walls on these and it for me it didn't quite suit the car let's meet the owner Chris Clancy Chris come on in now your designer by train is that what attracted you to the car they're just the sort of the clean shape yeah when I first moved to LA from New York I saw these amazing vintage cars and you don't see them that often in New York City so I knew I had to have one and I went through a number of American muscle cars kind of mid 70s Nova's and Camaros and once I got married I knew that I wanted one that didn't Rikka gasoline and set off car alarms and something that once we had a kid we could kind of go for a Sunday cruise right so I kind of looked at Mercedes and then fell in love with this jag and particularly the xjc or the coupe because it has the pillarless design that really lets in a lot of the air and and light when you're driving it and this is quite a rare car they didn't do a whole lot of these coupe yeah they did this a six cylinder version and they did a twelve cylinder version to the six-cylinder version is nicely balanced it is it's a wonderful driving car and it's really a pretty car it's just a classic shape you know sometimes it takes 10 to 15 years to appreciate the shape of a car like to me the 53 Hudson Hornet has the same sort of shape to a lot of a lot of curves you know and it's it's such a pretty automobile and the thing I like about this one is it just seems to sit right you know sometimes you see cars and with a little off one Bender's high whatever might be where's this one just sits nice actually it's it's a little bit lower than than it normally when it came off the showroom floor and when it was fixed up in 98 they did lower it just slightly kind of formed more of a hotrod feel than a classic British car also the pinstriping was done by butch Tucker who was doing a lot of classic American cars and hot rod cars he kind of studied under Von Dutch well and he has a little signature on the back Oh almost you have to get a magnifying glass to see it well it's it's very tastefully done is that that's not the original steering wheel that's an after-work yeah the one that came with it was a little bit more modern looking and when this car came out the XJS came out at the same time so that one looks so much more futuristic at the time compared to this which had the burled wood - and kind of went back to the older Jags in the sixties and seventies but see as 20 years go by this holds up better than the XJ yeah it does yes looks a little bulbous yeah this proportionately looks nice the front and the back have the same almost the same amount of overhang you know there's not one bad angle to the car oh no it's a very pretty car it's not one straight line on the car it's all very curvaceous you know Jaguar slogan was grace pace that's what you had this is saw the last link between the old-school jag where you got way more luxury for your money you know this is even though it wasn't as expensive as a rolls-royce or Bentley the interior looked similar to a Rolls Royce or a Bentley yeah because of the wood and everything yeah Jaguar gave you a lot for your money the engine is totally stock it is yep and it has two fuel fillers right here and one on the other side yeah it's interesting there's a toggle that you can manually switch between which tank so each one I believe holds ten gallons each so as you see one getting down you don't have to pull over you just push the button it kind of yeah but but you have to fill each time you do yeah it's and it seems to knowing that you would even have a switch while it doesn't it just pull from the - yeah but that's they did a lot of weird things but that's the Jag I'll of the wheels a nice looking wheels those tyres are probably little meteor and what came on the back of the day well so yeah the tires are the latest thing that I've put on it they're the the Michelin x WX excellent amazing tire it took me a couple months to justify paying the price for these tires but once I did it really just improved the overall feel of the car because if you put a modern tire on the car it just doesn't the the typography on the tire all that stuff doesn't feel right having expensive suit buying cheap shoes you look great you're just uncomfortable walking around yeah yeah I noticed that I got my jag XJ 120 over there and I put a period-correct butt new radials oh my god it transformed the car yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't think of it until you do it yeah and it really does so and when you realize it's your only contact patch between the road I mean you probably stopped a hundred feet short or maybe not that much but certainly fifty feet shorter with these tires and you whooping some well.she you know yeah it's funny because I couldn't see the date code on the old tires and the car got rear-ended and I had to do some repairs on it just under a year ago and once we took the tires off well actually once it was it was fixed up I go okay and you get these tires off let me see how old they are turns out there were fifteen years old yeah and so the last thing I wanted to do now having a new baby girl I didn't want to have her get into another accident or anything like that with old tires so we put them on can we open the hood let's see you can see the engine compartment Wow boy it looks like you just dropped this in there yeah so after doing the repairs to the back end then I started getting really OCD with everything I decided to take off the cam covers and I hand sand that sanded those down to get a nice finish on them started going into the power-steering really fixing it up and we drive it quite often it's kind of a Sunday driver for us but I keep it clean and of course anytime you have Lucas electrics you want to have that battery disconnect yeah yeah there's a we haven't quite been able to find the full ground on this car yet so so it always we lose a little juice over over the night how many miles on the car so the odometer I think says around 5,000 maybe 5,500 but I have a feeling it turned over since then the previous owner I found the car out in Erie Pennsylvania and he told me he drove at about 300 miles a year I think I put maybe a 300 to 500 in the first month that I I got it because I was so eager to drive how many owners have had any idea so I've tracked the car back to two owners before me I found the car in Erie Pennsylvania and then it was originally in Santa Barbara and so I think that that owner bought it from one other owner before that that was the when it was first sold in 75 and the six-cylinder looks nice in here you know as much I love that jag v12 its boy every bit of space is taken up and you've got vacuum hoses galore all the fuel lines and vacuum it's a web of confusion yeah well it's just beautiful it's a beautiful beautiful car thanks Jeff the nice clean lines and this is the exception I guess the steering wheel and the pinstriping this is what it looked like when left the factory this is the original color correct this is the original color code to it now there's different British racing green that sort of varies a little bit but yeah it's the original biscuit interior and and brg yeah not tan it has to be biscuit and the three speed is that an American transmission it's the the borg-warner right it's a clunky transmission so this is not gonna be the fastest car you've ever know it was certainly as fast as anything else back in the day yeah I mean it's comparable to a Cadillac or any of those kind of and it's it's a incredibly smooth I mean the v12 was probably a bit smoother but to me the the suspension on this car is amazing it has inboard disc brakes in the back right for the time I think it was pretty technology advanced at the at the time yeah very nice let's open the trunk that's a good sized chunk yeah yeah they may come back did you restore this is just how the trunk was yeah this is how it's just this this car I've talked to both the previous owners and it's been extremely cared for and and that's really how you have to find these cars because if they've been neglected at all it's just gonna be so cost prohibitive to to get them to this point and of course dual exhausts inboard disc brakes four-wheel disc brakes yeah yep and the chunk closes with a nice solid click that may just go oh look at that so you were born in Detroit now where's your family Jaguar people that seems like it might cause a little bit of friction yeah so it's it's an interesting story my great-great grandfather was one of the founding partners of Oakland Motor Works that then became Pontiac yeah it was acquired by General Motors my great-grandfather was president of Pontiac and and vice president of General Motors Wow and my grandfather worked with GM as well as being a financier but he was who initiated the tank program during World War two with General Motors so looking through family photos everyone and from my father my grandmother my grandfather all had Jags in Detroit which was it's a risky thing I guess yeah you can't even rent a foreign car in Detroit No so so yeah I always saw these cars I always thought they were beautiful so my dad had a Jaguar series one xjc the 4-door and in 74 75 he used it to tow out two motorcycles to British Columbia ferried him over to Alaska and then was the first to do the Alaskan Trail on motorcycles right and documented the whole so I grew up looking at this photo album of this car but the the four-door version always kind of admiring my dad as a hippie biker then later seeing how crazy it was to have a Jag in Detroit and toe-out these motorcycles with it even to have a hitch on this car scene so what kind of bike you dad that was a triumph yeah he had a triumph I believe he had a Norton he used to paint a lot of bikes so he had a couple back then he had a lot of other toys as well he had that he he didn't keep any of them he had a Ferrari 275 gtb/4 that he would pick my mom up from high school in he had okay mama from high school a minute yeah how old was your dad he was a couple years older yeah a couple of years older was sorry yeah he had a lot of toys as a kid so now he's about 70 years old oh okay there's a young guy yeah he's doing good very cool guys he seen this one yeah so they came out we just had our baby so they came out to see her and then right after seeing the baby I pulled the car out of the garage as well so those are my two things to show me this your first day it's my first job so good can we go for a nice relaxing Drive yeah let's do it sounds good before we put on our seatbelts and go for a drive let's go over the controls quite comprehensive dashboard a lot of luxury items for 1975 you got air conditioning got electric windows and all four windows still have a manually operated mirror on O'Mara on that side that was a few years away what do we have here so you got fuel and what you have a switch here which switches from one tank to the other that's right yeah so when you when you hit one it will then transfer the other and tell you how much fuel you have in that one which is pretty funny yeah and then you have across your water temperature tachometer speedometer trip ometer oil pressure voltmeter and then you have here headlights and side lights fog lights all of that same thing here lock accessory you have a modern radio and this is why so that's the temperature for the a/c so you can go from 65 to 85 all right you got two ashtrays here two in the back so because it'll have four people just just smoking constantly we've got a lung cancer by the time you get to the fence out there and this was really a luxury package this is pretty much standard in every Toyota Corolla now but yeah back in the day locking glovebox that was a big deal he did wins windshield windscreen what is that map light yep okay that's up here right yeah that's right though yeah like you gonna put the map right yeah you open it up so very good okay we'll put the windows up we'll go for right let's start it up let's see how quiet it is all right put the windows up put our seatbelts on we'll go for a ride you know is having problems when I would go on these long trips the going uphill the car would start to kind of slow down a bit in the hospital but would it be responsive yeah and I had a leak in the carburetor so I had to replace and rebuild all that right and then since then it's been great I could go up any Hill I like the small steering wheel hey my knees aren't hitting it yep perfect yeah and the wood is pretty close to what the the dash is so it to me it looks a lot better than the one that came with it and the horn button I it took a while to find that that one was a an eBay find yeah and this car wasn't even really for sale when I found it it was a YouTube video that the owner's son had made he had just got a digital SLR and started making little videos and posted this one and I came across it and it luckily had the owner's email so I reached out to him and he was kind of on the fence if he wanted to sell it and I have just flying out to Erie and meeting him and hanging out with him for a weekend to kind of just look at the car and well he decided to let it go and the car does shrink around you you know it it's actually a pretty small car but it's probably your room in it yeah all the windows really help and I when I was first looking for cars I wanted a convertible and my wife is really fair-skinned yeah yeah redhead and she was like no I can't do a convertible melt so that's when I started looking into the pillarless coupes cuz once you have all those windows down it really opens up yeah it feels very executive saloon ish yeah yeah it's a really comfortable ride and it for me it changes everything when you get in it you just go a little bit slower it's not by any means a daily driver and I'm taking it out maybe once or twice a month on Sunday it's very urban like it's very smooth it's yeah and so when they said that the v12 is even smoother yeah I I haven't driven one myself but it'd be hard for me to imagine being much much because it feels really natural I don't think maybe it was like a dealer option that they would cut it open yeah yeah I always kind of prefer without a Sun Room because it's just a point of leaking or yeah this car is known for having bad sound dampening because of the windows yeah I guess when they designed it they had to create some sort of pulley system to lock the windows and more yeah because at certain speeds I don't know how fast this thing can really get up to but they said that they were kind of popping out yeah it would like span once you hit 60 maybe actually not a lot of wind noise it's almost as quiet with the window down as it is with the window up yeah I've driven on the freeway with all four down and you can easily talk to the person in the car you know going back to what they they're campaign of the space Grace and peace I the thing that really sold me on this car is it was such a great balance of all three things you know you yeah when you get a 911 it's really stripped down it's all about the driving experience but you have a plastic - and nothing really fancy on the interior right and this one kind of had beautiful styling on the outside it drove well although not fast and then it had the great interior you know so yeah this timeless styling and given the time 75 when this came out it was already sort of dated in this in the sense when Ryan you're looking at an XJS everyone was kind of like that's that's the future of jag or so they thought you know so now they come with this Macintosh stereo did you put in I put it in it's just sort of a placeholder there now because it's not hooked up I need someone to do the the wiring for it but the mick and Tasha even though I grew up with my dad always having Macintosh a big cabinet of all the glowing blue lights you know but this this unit didn't come out until the 90s it was a partnership that they had with Clarion I think a Jag always gets a bad rap around this time but mechanically they're I think they're really dependable is just the electronics that go on yeah and Americans don't know how to take care of a car a lot of people they buy it thinking it's an American car which just keeps running and running it takes it takes a bit more for a lot of the older mechanics of it know these cars inside and out are also retiring right so it's harder and harder to find someone to work on very nice car drive relaxing the seats are very very comfortable I mean it's a very supportive and that Grand Touring that's that's what I was looking for but I also wanted something that that felt a little sporty you know the body styling we put some new fancy spark plugs in it the best yeah they have the two problems you know I'll pay a lecture for the fancy spark yeah runs nice and cool you have never had a problem with it overheating which always makes me question is the gauge right and you can hear the AC it's this weird sort of early computer gearbox we fixed it once and it was working everyday and then it kind of sat for too long I think such a beautiful car with all four windows down all right love this pillarless coupe you know it's almost like the feeling of a convertible it's really quite impressive ya know their dynamics of this car pretty good we got all four windows open yet the wind noise is not intrusive I can talk and have a conversation and you can hear me pretty clearly yeah it's great and you see how much pretty of the car looks with all four windows down it's a perfect day for a car like this in California not too hot not too cold just a slight chill in the air so ya have the heater on low probably about 67 degrees something like that but a bright sunny day and this paint really pops at this sunlight was an ice driving car yeah I always think about what these cars were like back in 1975 when they came out yeah how modern the drive must have felt back then yeah this was would have competed against the cadillac the pontiac bonneville the big Thunderbirds and to most Americans why would I pay extra for a six-cylinder when I could get a big v8 yeah I mean any more muscle to the hood yeah exactly exactly and kind of makes sense I guess but this is one of those cars you really have to drive to appreciate it and so many of the details stood out to me that you know a lot of cars in the 70s weren't built to last and and there I was everything was considered and all the materials that were were used in it we're really you know it kind of stood the test of time and they look as new today as they did probably when they came out you know pellis cars usually pretty noisy and window whistling and you going down but this doesn't have that I'm that's probably the original rubber in there too yeah yeah I believe that all the rubbers original and I was going to the the weather stripping on the windshield was looking a little tattered and I didn't want to risk popping out the windshield and possibly breaking it so everything has been kept to the original rubber I used this one solvent that really kind of keeps everything looking blackened and full of moisture but the nice thing about this car is it's still reasonably simple enough to work on you open the hood and you're not even meant to really open the hood on modern you got to take it to the dealer shouldn't let them plug it in and surprisingly a lot of original parts are still available on the car if if I need mechanically if I need something there's a number of suppliers that I can call and most of them have everything in stock and this active was built basically from 1948 to not that long ago yeah the route of this engine was a one Lamont's right back I mean this is late 60s version of the small-block Chevy yep the most versatile engine this is in sports cars sedans limousines yeah I mean one of the conversions that people do are putting two or three Weber's on it right instead of the s use and I wanted to keep it always as original as possible right just for when you open the hood that nothing is really kind of blaring as good a modification even worse a lot of guys put 350 Chevy's in yeah yeah that was pretty common they were there are a number I mean when I first came to California our never shop that's all they did yep Jaguar v8 conversion yeah the first car that I actually saw of this was a they had a LS one in it right and I took a seat in the car and I fell in love with the body but I really wanted a car that had everything original to it he can drive it I didn't drive it no problem with these is they're just labor-intensive yeah you know that's the trick things are just it wasn't built to be modular we can take this out and put this in yeah that won't go in let's just go see I put this you know it's often a conversation where we say okay if we're gonna do that means we have to take apart the dash and what are their problems could that lead to or are we just gonna live with it for now or are we gonna kind of take on that channel right but it's also great because it's it's because it's not such a valuable car I don't know how anyone really can enjoy these multimillion-dollar cars because I would be I'm stressed out about this one where I look good at ya know I'm sure you got enough to not worry I bought my f1 McLaren in 98 from 800,000 people but it's crazy yeah and the one that there will be so 479 saying it's like crazy but they say you take it out you go home oh my god with this kind of money yeah I always think in advance where am I gonna Park it and things like that but I still get it out and enjoy it because they're meant to be driven and meant to be enjoyed and if they sit they just begin to rock yeah that's the worst thing he's died is a great time I love him not only do they they handle well but then they look great as well yeah because if - flies at me screeching now yeah and they add a little the suspension to it yeah because they got that big sidewalk that's what I like about these older cars you got an 18 or a 17 inch tire so did you dad like it oh yeah you loved it yeah I asked him what happened to his jag and he said that he ran into a cow when I first got this car you know there wasn't a ton to fix on it so I took the whole all the gauges apart and replaced all the lightbulbs I was doing any minor work just cuz when you get something you want a car right put a little work into it so I was I was really nitpicking little things what a durable car this is to drive it's just very relaxing it's very smooth when you put the windows up you don't hear the helicopter like you do right now going overhead but you know it's fun to drive with the windows down this pillarless coupe you have this you know normally you'd have the pillar here that's why they call a pillar of the scuba doesn't have that but the window seals right now say it's quite quiet we were able to carry on a conversation with the windows up and down and we're fine the seats are really comfortable you know I've driven so many hot rods and restomod the last couple of weeks so I'm just kind of nice to just kind of float along so Chris thank you very much and thank you for saving this piece of history this is a real collector car when your little girl was about three months old now seven yeah seven months old okay so no now that one here she's gonna appreciate this car hopefully see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 615,155

Rating: 4.9109259 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Jaguar, English cars, V-6, coupe, 70s cars, sports, British racing green, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: z6YEgLuNN5U

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/hakuna_ma-ta]

I love how it looks down on you, even if its below you. Timeless design

[u/DreamDesignBuild]

Harry’s Garage had a great feature on his own XJ6. Absolute stunner. I suggest you check it out if you’re into this car.

[u/dvb70]

Reminds me very much of my old XJ except I had the four door. Exact some colour and year. Still one of my favourite cars I have owned. Amazingly comfortable.

[u/GiveMeAMuffin]

Gorgeous car! I know they apologize about the audio, but the video and format are off/diffrent. Hopefully they get it straightened out. I like how theyve been doing it for a while now.

[u/EggsForEveryone]

I recently saw someone who dropped an LS (yeah, yeah I know) in one of these, in blue, and it was absolutely beautiful..

https://jalopnik.com/this-corvette-powered-1976-jaguar-xj-coupe-was-perfect-1792614465

The shape of these Jaaaags are beautiful.. a work of art.. all the way up to the 2002 (?) XJ. Gorgeous works of art.

[u/IDriveAJag]

The series 2 coupe are gorgeous looking cars, and a Jag never looks bad in racing green.

[u/squad_dad]

As RegularCars puts it so eloquently, it's "powered by harumphs." So true. Harumphharumphharumphharumphharumphharumph

My '96 XJ6 has a much more sedated design than this one but you can't beat the looks of the real classic Jags.

[u/[deleted]]

I had no idea they made an XJ Coupe. It looks fantastic!