For comparison purposes, I drove a 1992-registered, 2007-imported XJ40 yesterday. It's for sale in my town for little less than 3k, with 250k on the clock.
I have to say, I like the brick headlight design of the XJ40 a lot more, and there's something a lot more stately about the rear and the taillight treatment. The car rides on 15" wheels which cause the tires to be very balloon-like, which contributed to a waftier ride. And as it was a 3.2, I think I detected lack of grunt despite driving around in town traffic and not hauling ass like we did for two-three weeks
Some points:
- Barely any of the rust on this car matched ours, no rust on the firewall but the (removeable) rear plate illumination mount was completely rotten
- Steering wheel is too big and unwieldy, made the car feel less direct to pilot
- Despite the dashboard being largely the same, the controls are more confusing
- Fuel gauge was out
- Radio worked, which was weird
- What I expected to be the steering wheel adjuster was the dimmer
- Driver seat only moved backwards, rest of the switches were on central tunnel which is less than ideal
- Headliner replaced with what seemed like felt
- Central locking didn't open the rear passenger door
- Didn't start as instantly or effortlessly as ours, had to be coaxed to life "half-warm" according to the dealer
I believe we were better off with an X300, but I do enjoy the image and appearance of these cars more. If only there was an XJ40 with all the right fixes made :lol:
Anyway, for the money I feel this is a decent buy, if you attend to the small niggles and make sure the A/C works. It's not often that you can say "Oh, it's nice, but we already have one..."