Jaguar XJ 5.3 C V12 Coupe drive review (part1)

what today's Harry's garage is on one of my favorite cars in the garage obviously not the smartest car in the garage no the highest value but one that's a bit of a hoot it's the jankura xjc v12 that what makes this one so intriguing is the previous owner who owned it since 1987 so and I bought it last years in 2014 so a huge period of ownership obviously absolutely adore this car and made some very tasty modifications along the way but first of all the coupe a version is actually of the series 2 XJ the XJ was massively successful for Jaguar when it first came out in 1968 series 1 sold something like 98 thousand cars series to 78 thousand cars but it always William Lyons fancy doing a coupe a version and in October 1973 show this car at the London Motor Show very elegant the trouble was and he wanted to make it pillar so the doors have been extended so they added four inches of those it's quite a lot of engineering to do that and you move that B pillar and he wanted to make it pill this because it has that beautiful elegant look if you do a pilla scoop a that gave that jagger engineers a massive amount of problems because this is 150 mile an hour coupe a they he wanted the refinement to be the same as the saloons and there was all sorts of solutions to try and get the windows to seal so it took two years before it actually went into production but I think it was worth it and now it's obviously a very rare car because those numbers they made 10,000 coupe A's in total but only 1800 of those were Jaguar v12 versions so they put that in perspective the holy grail of Jaguar e-type is that series one the 3.8 series one well there's 15,000 of those so if you want a v12 XJ see there's a ten to one ratio almost so these cars are ten times rarer than the holy grail of the you type series 13.8 some of the lovely details on this car are the Kent's alloy shell they optional and period used to get the steel sort chrome steel on the exchange I think they really set off the car really nicely round the front you get serious to gave his superb front that's army instantly recognizable was classic jankura reduced the size of the grille we had that grille whether it still be hiding behind the number plate just a really elegant thing and of course on this one the prize badge of v12 loveliness being an xj obviously get a giant boot and on this x JS of this period you had twin philip tanks which are completely separate as we'll get to inside you actually are to press a switch to swap one to the other prize bad fuel injection in 1978 when this car first came out was a big deal 5.3 c so a pretty serious motor car and 295 horsepower sorry 285 horsepower 295 foot-pounds it competed against well this wasn't quite sure what to picture against actually i've looking at the road test and they put it against the sort of price matched it with cars like the BMW 633 but it absolutely wipes the floor and performance that car 100 this one is 150 miles an hour 7.62 60 and 150 mile an hour top speed we really put in a class of its own it was back then the the BMW 633 was 134 miles an hour which was about the same as the Mercedes SL c 450 coupe a and the 911 that was still one hundred and thirty five hundred and forty miles an hour it's a 150 mile an hour coupe a that was a big deal because when you open the door to this car you get to spot some of the differences first of all you met with a period momo wheel with a rather lovely v12 badge in the middle of it the series one that had a series of dials right in the middle the - this one's got those extra vents instead which is a bit of a shame and so it's the wood wood - as ever as you just sort of imagine in every jagger this one is that lovely black trim as you can see he's got red rim fared but what defines this car is that gearbox because they all came with three speed automatic but the owner of this car decided in 2001 what this car really need was a manual gearbox and of course it completely transforms the way this car drives as we'll get to see in a moment so the previous owner not only put the manual gearbox he also had a little play of the engine as well now before I show you the engine I ought to give it a slight health warning because it's not pretty under here this was 1978 fuel injection was very new and everything is on show so compared to today's engines this looks a bit scary and there we go now what he did on this car a as a company aj6 who create new manifolds for this v12 engine in standard form this is a 285 horsepower and around 300 foot-pounds but by putting these on which has bigger throttle bodies here and a slave ECU you start to get an increase in horsepower they also put this new airbox on down here and then down here you can see it's got ten twin open pipes here just to increase him out of air that this engine can breathe and the combined effect of all this is an extra around 45 horsepower and thirty foot-pounds of torque so we're up around the 325 horsepower 330 foot power so quite a lot of horsepower under this bonnet combine that with the manual gearbox and suddenly you have a completely different character of v12 XJ coupe a just some other things around the engine I must show you is why it looks so scary is they actually put the distributor right in the middle of it so you've got this complete spaghetti of spark plug leads throttle body on top here and all the injectors on so these are the return lines for the fuel so it's all horrible myth especially just on top of the radiator there it it sort of reminds me of a development car that they haven't quite finished so it's a typical engineers car everything's on shows is dead easy to fix but perhaps not a sort of bonnet that you say or look at my v12 yes that's that noise it's like yeah a sort of baked bean can I don't know why it's so tinny I don't love you hear that I'm easy it's like there's no sound that meaning on the roof and without the vinyl roof you hear that it when I brought this home this car home for the first time I have to say my wife sort of looked at me and thought what have you bought now but I'm it I'm in love it she doesn't have to travel in it and then one of the reason I've been loving it but any of you can pick this up it's like there's light there's no flywheel on it xj c v12 don't normally sound like that you have this lazy leave a three-speed automatic but this car is completely transformed i am in a manual there's a slightly strange thing about this car is you seem to sit quite low but there's a dip where your feet and legs go and it's it has quite a nice seating position and but you've got this sort of space up to the top anyway you're gonna take it out and I'll show you some other sort of fun things about this car now you're probably as we go along you'll pick up some squeaks and rattles and various noises coming from this car but I sort of figured it was only paid fine half thousand for it and it's it's right this kind of sort of very tough life I was taught the guys who used to look after it and death they said the owner only signed it all the modification all he really cared about was driving and the outside appearance and inside of it was very much secondary he used to do various events with it as well I've got in the history he's got this record of the speeded in in 2004 Japan TJ drew Club used to run these speed trials and he achieved one hundred and thirty three point nine three miles an hour which is pretty quick and puts him in with the weather quick SJS is 60 GS T's and the what else was there Oh an xx JR as well so yeah that's sort of the newer cars that obviously than this but that sort of speed it was doing there was a db5 there that I did about a hundred and twenty four miles an hour it's about 10 miles an hour behind there was analyse thousand Saints ought to be at least one through five and a TR six they did 116 miles an hour so it gets a bit of a move on it's not really a sport it was just a bit of a who Plissken surprisement is also geared incredibly long gearing on this car first almost takes you to 60 miles an hour and then an end the gears are quite closely stacked just if there's little taste is a bit of a Bartis engine it's mainly axial induction bar and completely different internal ex-ac engines for try and do 150 miles an hour and I have 1400 reps on the clock so that gives you a soft taste of how over geared is an overdrive really thin and the one thing you have slowly discovered here in a v12 Jacob a completely different character the engine has to have an XK engine six normal straight six the finer details and also this aged integer XJ that was a beer would be a long-stroke engine the v12 is very much a short stroke so it likes to rev and the reason behind it well actually was developed from the XJ 13 Jagger develop with meatwad versus because he was going to go racing obviously the XJ 13 was a quad cam so made racing and civilian lies reducing it on a refinement they cemented we have to produce the v12 for my road cars we're going to make it much more refined how to be doing so you went down to single cam and it is whisper quiet and the refinement is amazing but it likes to read and that is the difference of this car I just changed a two-second here we are three thousand clock we go laughs is so different a tailless witches will v12 completely there is not animal like of Ferrari but cars in creamy smooth and are this a little park at the top endless very addictive one thing I should explain on this car is you have the two tanks and the switch is down here and there's no reserve light or anything suddenly I found myself right now I've Kris the other fuel switch Mullis switched literally to the other tank here I'll cord the tank on the left hand I'm just over half full nice answer it's just bizarre wore me out to 10 coz leash you have to press a button or also protects don't last that long they talk to about 1213 mpg when it was near I have to say with the bots yeah I reckon if I squirt around the lanes and drive like a hooligan I'm about 12 13 15 cruising up in one of the offices of my life that is a good job enterprises have come down recently because this is quite expensive on feel I usually have under the sink smells come on queasy and we used to drive it really pretty hard or with some people and this just shows you that if you do drive the cars regularly and you do time pretty hard doesn't actually do them any harm what's worse is that in seeing the carriage forever not being used shame they didn't actually produce any high speed force-feed xj12 in theory coupage called the guys back agenda there are one or two of the management's actually had special cars built for this high speed gearbox I've got here is is so much better than the four-speed that was in period of time at Jacqueline's seventies so actually this is actually the best cop this is amazingly rare though I know any other one other card is converted like this it's a shame to be shrinks features our Aunt Rose around raising some rubber so a different set of wheels on is slightly Botti on these standards or the I quickly discovered is the Brinks needed upgrading and touch the brakes he just added power so I am I put some yellow stuff some special brake pads in it just to give it a bit more braking which is so desperately needed and here's a car that to quicken most of the time it's such a silky-smooth b12 you see a lot changing so you made some pretty quick I'm gonna tell myself now I shouldn't be driving this and bracelets for Jim should just me slobs a nice campus I think this is a work in progress sort of card and done was a few things I'm going to do - one thing I've got to tighten up its suspension because I know things we looked at it up with quite a while names obviously it's been light on damping at the rear I'm gonna I think it should have all a voice from the outside you know I'm going to be twelve at the front so I am little going source so we keep watching Mary's garage you'll see this car sort of developed over time meantime thanks for joining me please subscribe to Harry's garage and I'll see you very soon you you

Channel: Harry's garage

Views: 689,381

Rating: 4.9421916 out of 5

Keywords: Heritage, Harry, Metcalfe, Evo, Diary, Jaguar, Coupe, V12, series, series 2, II

Id: 7TMgIkx40tI

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 04 2015