XJS

A Closed Car on Purpose

The XJ-S was planned when Jaguar, like much of the industry, believed new US safety rules would soon outlaw open cars. The Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust is direct about the consequence: concern over American safety requirements meant the car was designed only as a closed car, and the Trust describes it not as a replacement for the E-Type sports car but as Jaguar's first model in the international grand touring class. Ate Up With Motor credits the shape of the project, coded XJ27, to aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer with substantial input from Sir William Lyons, and Wikipedia records that the in-house design team under Doug Thorpe completed it. The car was shown at Frankfurt in September 1975. In the US it went on sale for the 1976 model year at $19,000, almost 20 percent more than an XJ12L sedan.

The Federal V12 and the HE

Every early American XJ-S was a V12 automatic. The four-speed manual went into only a few hundred V12s worldwide before it was dropped in early 1979, and Jaguar did not import those manual cars to the US. Most cars used the three-speed Borg-Warner Model 12, replaced in early 1977 by GM's Turbo Hydra-Matic 400. In federal form the 5.3-liter V12 made 244 hp SAE net, which Jack Baruth at The Truth About Cars later described as smog-strangled to just over 240 horsepower. The 1975 car weighed nearly 3,900 lb, and it was not cheap: by the summer of 1977 the US list price had risen to almost $24,000. Revised fuel injection for 1980 brought federal output to 262 hp and 290 lb-ft. Then in July 1981 came the HE, for High Efficiency, launched as a 1982 model. Its cylinder heads used Swiss engineer Michael May's Fireball combustion chamber, with 11.5:1 compression in federal engines, and the gain was in economy more than in headline power; Ate Up With Motor reports an HE could better 17 US mpg in gentle driving.

Open Cars, American Style

The open XJ-S arrived in stages, and the American sequence differs from Europe's. In October 1983 Jaguar introduced the 3.6-liter AJ6 six, and the 1984 model year brought the XJ-SC cabriolet with removable roof panels. The six was not exported to the US except for a handful of test cars, so American buyers waited for the V12 cabriolet, which arrived here in the fall of 1986. For the 1987 model year Jaguar also commissioned full convertibles from Hess & Eisenhardt for the US at around $47,000, only about $2,200 more than the XJ-SC; about 2,000 were built. The factory convertible was shown at Geneva in March 1988 for the 1989 model year, V12 only, at $56,000 in the US. Racing ran alongside: Group 44 had a very successful Trans-Am season with the car in 1977 and repeated it in 1978, earning Jaguar the manufacturers' championship, and Tom Walkinshaw's TWR cars won the 1984 European Touring Car drivers' title.

Ford, the Facelift and the Six

Under Ford's new ownership the car was relaunched in May 1991 as an early 1992 model, badged XJS without the hyphen. Coupes gained frameless door glass and a reshaped rear window and side glass, along with a restyled grille, rocker panels, taillights, seats and dashboard. US cars had worn four round sealed-beam headlamps until 1992. For 1993 the V12 grew to 6.0 liters and was paired for the first time with a four-speed automatic, GM's 4L80E, rated 301 hp SAE and 355 lb-ft. The six-cylinder car finally came to North America the same year as a 4.0, rated 237 hp SAE and 282 lb-ft, and in May 1993 convertibles gained a revised floorpan that restored the rear seat. JaguarSport's XJR-S was officially imported for 1993 as well, 104 US cars in all. The AJ6 six was reworked as the AJ16 in April 1994, and late in the run the six-cylinder coupe was dropped in North America, leaving the 4.0 convertible with automatic.

The Last Cars

The XK8 that replaced the car debuted at Geneva in March 1996, about a month before XJS production ended, and Jaguar still sold more than 3,300 cars for that final model year. Drives Today dates the last V12 to 1995 and records the final car, a six, as number 115,413. The run-out cars were sold as Celebration models, with diamond-turned wheels, Jaguar-embossed seats and a wooden steering wheel.

The V12's faults are mostly heat. Grassroots Motorsports notes that when the engine runs hot, valve seats tend to part from the cylinder heads, and calls the V12 complex and frightfully expensive to rebuild. Drives Today traces overheating to neglected maintenance and says the alloy engine corrodes internally when antifreeze strength is not kept up; Motorious says the radiator silts up when coolant is not changed every two years. Rubber vacuum and fuel hoses harden and crack with age, according to a Grassroots reader. The six-cylinder AJ6 and AJ16 engines are known for head gasket failure around 100,000 miles. Bodywork is the other large expense: rocker panels, valances, wheel arches and both subframes. Electrical complaints center on pre-facelift switchgear, power mirror motors, ABS sensors on later cars and air conditioning components. Inboard rear brakes on cars built before 1993 are awkward to service, and the car's weight wears springs, dampers and bushings. Build quality depends on the period. The Jaguar Enthusiasts' Club says the car suffered from poor build quality during the British Leyland era, Motorious dates a significant improvement to after 1982, and Drives Today says post-1991 cars have higher quality components. Writing in 2010, Jack Baruth at The Truth About Cars advised against expecting to use any pre-1991 car as a daily driver.

Structure first. Drives Today's guide says the bottom three inches of the car are especially susceptible to corrosion and names the front valance and the inner and outer wheel arches front and rear; Motorious adds the area around the headlamps and down the front fenders, and warns that both the front and rear subframes rot, which is a structural repair rather than a cosmetic one. The rear subframe carries the differential as well as the suspension, and until 1993 the rear brakes sat inboard beside it, so a car whose rear end has never been dropped and cleaned has probably not had its rear brakes properly serviced either. On a V12, the cooling system is the history that matters. Motorious says the radiator silts up if coolant is not changed every two years and treats brown coolant as a reason to walk away. Grassroots Motorsports puts replacement of every cooling and heating hose and both thermostats on the list of first jobs after purchase. The rear bank of spark plugs is hard to reach and often skipped, which a service record will show. Pre-facelift switchgear and air conditioning are the electrical items most likely to be wrong. For identity, the US facts are simple: a manual V12 is not a car Jaguar imported here, a 3.6 six is not a US car, and a six-cylinder XJS sold new in the US will be a 1993 or later 4.0. US cars wore four round sealed-beam headlamps until 1992, which helps date a car whose front end has been changed.

All figures are as of October 2026 and come from classic.com, which divides the car into Series I (1976 to 1981), Series II (1982 to 1991) and Series III (1991 to 1996). The market benchmarks, each taken from that series' own page, are tightly bunched: $12,967 for Series I, $14,007 for Series II and $15,114 for Series III. classic.com's cross-links between the series pages show slightly different figures for the same series, so these are read as approximate. Series II is the only one of the three with a published average sale, $13,475, and its lowest recorded sale is $1,000 for a 1988 XJ-S sold without reserve in July 2023. Supply is uneven. classic.com showed no Series I cars for sale against 37 Series II and 33 Series III cars, and the Series II asking prices it listed ran from $12,498 for a 1986 coupe to $24,900 for a 1990 car. The most recent US Series I sale it records is a 1976 coupe at $3,900 in April 2026. For the 1996 model year, the last and dominated by six-cylinder convertibles, the twelve recorded 2026 US results run from $8,000 in May to $24,219 in February, with a Barrett-Jackson sale at $24,200 in June. A threefold spread within a single model year is a market priced on condition and history rather than on specification. The classic.com pages consulted do not break out the XJR-S, the Hess & Eisenhardt convertibles or the V12 cabriolet, so no figure for those is given here.