John Bleasdale in the UK has been asking about very early surviving XJ-Ss, and mentioned on his brilliant Facebook page some very interesting examples.
They were RHD chassis #1, 2 and 31 and he asked for photos of #2.
So for John, here is another angle of #1 (the Lavender car), two which is the ex-John McCormack 1979 racer, owned and raced ever since by Mark Trenoweth in Brisbane – and also #12 which was the main Jaguar press and media car. It featured on the cover of Autocar in the world’s first press report on the XJ-S.
In 1987 Mark won Jaguar Car’s International Driver of the Year for his success in this car. It is seen here in two of its liveries – Unipart was the original. Mark has restored it perfect in Unipart colours and brings it out regularly. John McCormack is a good friend of his and assists with preparation and drives the car often too.
Also in Australia is #27, while #31 (manual) was pristine too the last time I saw it – and even had the original Dymotape instructions still on the body showing how to lock the bonnet!
Chassis #1 and #2 were brought to Australia by the same fellow, and McCormack got #2 to build his GT racer with genuine Jaguar V12 power.
For that he had to get FIA Homologation papers, which he did – and because the XJ-S now had them then, Tom Walkinshaw was able to qualify the XJ-S to race in Group A – even though the manual option had long gone out of production!
The rest is history.
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