XJ12C coupe - prototype

[Sherlock]

I saw an interesting car on the weekend (right here in Alberta!), a 1973 XJ12C coupe.

According to the placard on the car...

- It was brought to Canada (as a prototype) for winter testing, set up with left-hand-drive controls

- After that it was re-imported to England, converted to right-hand-drive and driven by a Jaguar executive

- Later (didn't say which year) it was brought back to Canada by an Albertan, and converted back to left-hand-drive.

- Now it belongs to the massive collection of the Reynolds Alberta (transportation) Museum

Visually it looks very similar, if not the same, as an S2 XJ12, some pictures enclosed:

 

[William Mapstone]

Thanks for posting pictures. I always enjoy looking at the XJ coupes. That color is a little different.

 

[Steve]

That's Greensand, I had a V-12 saloon that colour, with olive green leather.

 

[Radford]

Vinyl top just kind of ruins it for me, makes it look like a Merc Cougar.

 

[vagt6]

Radford, the vinyl top looks uglier today than it did in 1973. In fact, lots of stuff from the seventies looks ugly now (i.e., shag carpet; afros; platform shoes, etc.).

Almost every production U.S. marque offered a vinyl roof back then, they were virtually everywhere.

I always hated them, though! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cryin.gif

 

[Radford]

Yeah Mark I know, my early teen years were sent in the seventies. Fortunately I spent a good deal of the time on a military base in Korea and got to miss some of the excesses.

My favorite was Ford's "look-a-like" for the Mercedes Benz, the Granada (the US version). Boy, were a lot of people taken for a ride.

 

[bmurphy7369]

Sherlock,
The only thing different about this car from the 75-77 S2 V12 Coupes is that the chrome strip on the side body line is not present and the leaper didn't go into production on the model... interesting find. As far as I had known there was one prototype, a Series I, that is still being bought and sold as recently as 2003? that was the working prototype. I believe it is Signal Red with Biscuit interior. Having the S1 grille and appointments, it is easy to spot as a prototype. Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Brian

 

[Steve]

They fitted the vinyl top because of the imperfections that were in the roofline. That covered them up a treat. If I recall correctly, all 12-cylinder cars had the vinyl roof as standard. The leaper was not fitted to UK market cars when the Series 1 XJ range was introduced, and this naturally carried over to the Series II and Series III cars, owing to new revisions of the Road Traffic Act that effectively banned mascots as fitted to new cars. This was to prevent injury to pedestrians. Any mascots fitted had to give way instantly when struck, and the leaper was not a design that was conducive to such a redesign, at least not back then. In fact I think you'll find that the leaper was not fitted by the factory on any XJ series car, those that you see here in the USA would have been dealer-fitted. The next time that we saw factory-fitted leapers would have been on the redesigned car of 1995 on.......

 

[Sherlock]

Speaking of the "leaper" mascot... My friend's 1987 Jaguar [XJ6] Sovereign has that mascot on it (in Canada)... Our Jaguar Series 3 saloon cars of that era being the same as the European/British spec models, I don't recall paying any special attention to see if all our Canadian Series 2 or 3 cars have it, just something I take for granted perhaps.

No problem for posting the pictures, I wouldn't have guessed the story of the car without looking at the placard that was with it.