Final Parking Space: 1986 Jaguar XJ6

The first Jaguar XJ sedans with their famously snarling straight-six engines hit American streets as 1969 models. Production of the original XJ6 continued through two facelifts over nearly two decades, at a time of great tumult in the British car industry. Here’s an example of a late Series 3 XJ6, found in a Northern California boneyard a while back.

I have documented plenty of discarded Jaguars, with some seriously endangered rare cats among them, and this car has the biggest final odometer reading for any Jaguar— or, for that matter, any British— vehicle I’ve ever found in a knacker’s yard.

For the record, the best-traveled junkyard car I’ve ever found was built in Kentucky by Toyota. That car spent its life being completely invisible on the road, though, while this Coventry-built machine stood out from the crowd wherever it went.

Planet Auto, which operates a handful of self-service yards along the Interstate 80 corridor between Sacramento and Reno, offers some runners and “builders” for sale. Those that don’t sell end up in the regular U-Pull yard, their useful parts made available for harvest; this $1900 Jag’s final parking space was a few rows away from that of a rust-free $1800 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce.

The interior looks to have been in very nice condition upon arrival here, but the combination of “Jaguar” and “200,000 miles” proved a menacing one to potential buyers. Perhaps some of these interior bits ended up being transplanted to other XJs before this car met the cold steel jaws of the crusher.

The original XJ was born from an excruciatingly drawn-out development process, during which Jaguar Cars Limited was absorbed into the British Motor Corporation, which soon after became British Motor Holdings. The ink had barely dried on that deal when BMH merged with the Leyland Motor Corporation, maker of Leyland trucks and buses plus Triumphs and Rovers, creating the British Leyland Motor Corporation.

The outlook for the once-mighty British automotive industry seemed gloomy at the time, to put it mildly. The XJ6 was unveiled to the British public about eight months after the formation of British Leyland, soon after which production was hobbled repeatedly by a series of car-industry strikes across the country. BL’s difficulties led to the company being effectively nationalized by the British government in 1975, with Jaguar being sold off by the Thatcher government in 1984 (for more nerve-ripping tales of the decline, fall, and aftermath of British Leyland, read about the Final Parking Space of a 2005 MG ZT in Yorkshire).

Through all of these twists and turns of the Jaguar story, the XJ6 remained in production and sold quite well on this side of the Atlantic. Today’s car was built during Jaguar’s half-decade of independence between the British Leyland and Ford eras.

The last year for the Series 3 XJ6 was 1987, after which the XJ40 version took over. Production of this car’s V12-engined brethren continued all the way through 1992.

The MSRP of this car was $32,250, which is about $92,629 in 2024 dollars. That was significantly cheaper than either a new 1986 BMW 735i or a new 1986 Mercedes-Benz 420 SEL ($38,280 and $45,450, respectively).

The engine is a fuel-injected 4.2-liter XK-series DOHC straight-six, rated at 176 horsepower and 219 pound-feet (both very smoothly delivered).

From drunken Range Rover drive-by shootings to hallucinatory Ascot hats to stingy Scotsmen to a real-life jaguar threatening Lovely Rita from within a first-year Series 3 XJ, British Leyland didn’t hesitate to traffic in derogatory British stereotypes when pitching their cars.

Knowing the XJ40 was on the way, American Jaguar dealers pushed deals on used Series 3s.