Do Classic Jaguars Face a Dark Future?

Jaguar, as a brand, is on the rocks. That’s the growing sense in the collector car industry, at least. For decades, classics like the XK 120, XK 140, XK 150 and E-Type have been mainstays for dealers, brokers, and buyers, but lately they don’t seem to generate the same market excitement they once did. They are getting harder to sell, and over the past five years many prices are either stagnant or decreasing.

Of course, the market is generally softening from its pandemic-era heights, and this is compounded by demographic shifts that are beginning to favor Radwood-era (1980s and 1990s) cars over their predecessors. This isn’t just affecting classic Jaguars—many carbureted V-12 Ferrari road cars, long-hood (1973 and earlier) Porsche 911s, and Austin-Healeys are also seeing relative slumps. But a surprising number of cars from this era are also seeing an uptick in their values. Porsche 356 coupes, C2 Corvettes generally—and ’63 Split-Window coupes especially—and V-6 Ferrari Dinos have increased in value anywhere from 20 percent to 90 percent over the last five years.

So why does the brand, traditionally so prevalent in the hobby, seem to be getting left behind? This is doubtless a complex question, but in the case of Jaguar, several factors appear to be conspiring to collectively dampen interest in what are some of the greatest sports cars of all time.

Promising Starts

Sir William Lyons, who founded Jaguar between the world wars, was famously good at commercializing genuinely compelling products at prices so low they were scarcely believable. Jaguars were world-class cars, delivering sensational looks and performance while consistently pushing cutting-edge technology and selling in much higher volume than other cars that offered the same. Their on-track record drove this point home: Jaguar won the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times in the 1950s (and twice more after that). Only Porsche, Audi, and Ferrari have won Le Mans more times than Jaguar.

Much of that early success came down to engines. In 1948, when everyone else was still essentially warming up their prewar designs, Jaguar released an all-new car, and not only that, it was powered by an engine with twin overhead cams. The car was the XK 120, and its straight-six “XK” engine was so advanced that variants remained in production  for over 40 years. Meanwhile, the XK 120 was so good that in its competition trim as the C-Type, it won Le Mans twice. With the same mechanical bits developed further and fitted to a new, even more stunning, more aerodynamic semi-monocoque body in the D-Type, Jaguar won Le Mans three more times.

In 1961, four years after its last victory of the 1950s, Jaguar was selling all that Le Mans–winning goodness to the public in another groundbreaking and gorgeous new sports car, the E-Type. It was even more advanced, thanks to the addition of independent rear suspension. A few months after the E-Type arrived, Jag put those same technical components into a full-sized sedan, the Mark X.

It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the E-Type. With semi-monocoque construction, a twin-cam engine, four-wheel disc brakes, and fully independent suspension, it was, as Jaguar pointed out in advertisements, the most advanced sports car in the world. No other single car combined all these characteristics at any price: not Porsche, not Mercedes, not Maserati, not Aston Martin, not even Ferrari. And the price of the Jag? Around £2000 in its home market (a relatively modest $46,600 in today’s dollars). That meant it was 80 percent the cost of a Porsche 356, half as expensive as an Aston Martin DB4, and a third as much as a Ferrari 250. It was quicker, faster, and better looking than almost all of them, too. Even Enzo Ferrari famously lavished praise on the car upon its debut, and decades later, an E-Type roadster joined New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

With credentials like these, it’s no surprise that Jaguar sold more than 72,000 E-Types during a 14-year production run. The cars peaked in the 1960s, before American regulations started strangling performance and spoiling their looks. Even so, Jaguar was on top of the world during this period, and it wasn’t only thanks to the E-Type. Jaguar sedans had temptingly similar underpinnings to the sports cars, and if buyers thought those features were advanced in something like the E-Type, they were downright space-age in a sedan. Vast expanses of wood and leather epitomized British luxury, while beautiful and distinctive exterior styling and superb value for money gave four-door Jaguars a unique appeal that no other car in the world could quite match.

Changing Fortunes

And then, everything stopped. Not literally, but Jaguar’s evolution largely did. The 1970s saw the E-Type replaced by the XJS, which was fresh and contemporary but much more grown up. If the E-Type was a sports car with the heart of a Le Mans racer, the XJS was the European version of a personal luxury car. The seminal XJ6 also arrived in 1968, right-sizing the Jaguar sedan formula and setting the world alight, but it remained in production for a full 18 years before being replaced by a car that was really just a 1980s take on the exact same concept. At the corporate level, getting caught up in the woes of British Leyland in the 1970s and eventually being bought by Ford in 1990 did Jaguar few favors.

Little had changed by the early 2000s. Jaguars, despite having contemporary technology under the skin, offered an aesthetic experience that had become anachronistic. They felt like a caricature of olde-worlde England, which gave them virtually no sizzle to youths and younger buyers, who preferred the forward-looking modernity of German or Japanese luxury cars. If those cars were modernist houses of concrete and glass, then Jaguars were Tudors with thatched roofs.

Jaguar set out to reinvent itself by building a new, modern identity starting with the new XF in 2007, followed by other sedan models, entries into the lucrative SUV market, and a new sports car, the F-Type. These cars simply never resonated completely with buyers. Their identity wasn’t strong enough, the engineering and reliability not good enough, and the interiors not nice enough. Unlike Land Rover, who has so effectively modernized the Range Rover while somehow preserving a feeling of Britishness, Jaguar’s post-millennium effort at rebirth lacked the relevance and raw desirability to drive consumers into showrooms in substantial numbers.

Looking forward, it’s unclear (especially given current consumer preferences) whether Jaguar’s assertion of an all-electric future will help or hurt the values of its classic models. Its aspirations to head further upmarket may help the brand’s financial viability, but the impact of any future success on the marque’s past models will depend wholly on whether its execution inserts the kind of passion that brings enthusiasts into the fold.

Struggling for Relevance

Modern consumers have known only two Jaguars: the charming but backwards-looking neo-classical version of the 1980s–2000s, and the modern but ultimately uninspiring rebirth that began in 2007. Unless they consciously seek out classic cars, these buyers won’t be familiar with the greatest Jaguars of all: The ones that did not look fondly toward the past or unconvincingly toward the future, instead descending directly from Le Mans race cars and offering the world’s most advanced motoring experience in a competitively priced, beautiful, contemporary, and authentic wrapper.

One of the troubles for Jaguar’s classics is that their collectibility (and that of all collector cars) is driven by their relevance to enthusiasts. Not enough of today’s enthusiasts associate Jaguar with their core automotive memories—the kind that would drive them to loop back and buy something from a brand they desired in their youth.

BMW provides a stark contrast—the brand retains enthusiastic and growing appeal among collectors. Twenty years ago, a new 7-Series costs much more than an M3. Today, the M3 is worth more. Why? Because many more enthusiasts want a 2004 M3 than want a 2004 745Li. When cars become old enough, the market for them is composed almost exclusively of enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, few Jaguars have set enthusiast hearts alight, even looking back 50 years. There are of course evangelists of the XJS, XK8/XKR, and XJ40/X300/X308 generations of the XJ, and likely other models besides. But we are small in number and a little bit weird. There aren’t enough of us to form an entire new generation of Jaguar fans, especially when other brands have done such a good job of connecting their enthusiast-driven identity to the mainstream. Think Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Land Rover.

As for the classic Jaguars of the company’s golden era, their lack of connection to today’s enthusiasts is compounded by the fact that they sold so well when new. Corvettes of the same period sold in large numbers. Porsches and Alfa Romeos did, too, albeit to a lesser extent. But virtually every model of Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Maserati from the 1950s to early 1970s ranged from a few hundred to barely a few thousand units. Given how comparatively abundant Jaguars are, it takes a larger number of buyers to sustain appreciation, and there just aren’t enough such people in the current market. If they had made a few hundred E-Types or XKs, they’d all be worth at least a million dollars. But they didn’t, and they aren’t.

The Silver Lining

While it’s disappointing to see Jaguar values languish, there are upsides. What made them so compelling against their competitors in the 1950s and ’60s is still true today. They represent great value for money given their intrinsic characteristics, and softening prices make them an even greater value.

If you’ve dismissed Jaguars as “old people cars,” take a closer look at them. And if you’ve seen the light and own one, share it with as many people as possible. Let them hear it, ride in it, and form those memories that will reshape them from a car enthusiast into a Jaguar enthusiast. If Jaguar as a company can’t endear itself to a new crop of car fans, it’s up to those of us who know better to do that work instead.

Regardless of their values, the experience provided by these cars has lost none of its appeal. To look at, ride in, or drive an E-Type is one of motoring’s great pleasures, and it happens to be one of the precious few automotive experiences that is getting more, rather than less, financially accessible.

Derek Tam-Scott is a used car salesman and car content grump.

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