I have a '99 XJR. Perhaps the best car I have ever owned, with no problems at all until a fuel pump a few months ago. Marriage of Ford and Jag was good one, in my opinion, for both companies. // Beautiful pictures of the concourse. Having competed in those several times (and won) I can attest to the amount of time and effort needed to get your baby just right. We normally devote about three weeks (off and on, mostly on) to getting ours cleaned up properly, using Q-tips and spray bottles on the entire engine. A labor of love, to be sure.

Nice car, beautiful shots. I hope you don't mind me joining in. I spent three years in the UK back in the late 1950s during which time I bought an old Jag, a forerunner of the sports model that led to the XK series. It was a 1939 SS drophead coupe (convertible) with a post-war 3.8 liter engine. I bought it at an auction for 150 pounds, ($2.84 to the pound exchange rate). It had been stored for 12 years after it's previous owner, a racecar driver, was killed in a wreck. He had beefed up the engine considerably and the car had only 12,5?? miles on it when I got it. It was made pre-WWII but with the design of the post-WWII design of 1948. It was a screamer. Confident, perhaps overly, I rode the train to the auction knowing I was bringing that car home. I totaled it in a head-on with a bus on a backcountry road three weeks later and subsequently learned that it was only one of 90 made before the Jag plant shut down to make war vehicles. When I bought it there were only five left. I was pretty sick when I learned of its value and even sicker years later when Dave Garroway's (the first host of ABC's Today Show) sold at auction for around $250,000. Dave's cream colored one is still running around Hollywood - I recently saw it in an early Uma Thurman movie. Mine was the premier model left. I had pictures but they got misplaced "in the shuffle." In 1987 I was in a book store in Tampa to get a Haynes manual for the original Mini I bought after I wrecked the Jag and brought home. While looking through the car section, there was a British sports car magazine and one of the remaining four '39s was featured so I bought the magazine and below is a copy of the one from that book. The top on the one in the magazine was light canvas color and mine was maroon so I colored the top from the magazine and otherwise the car in the book was identical to mine. I've been kickin' my butt over that car almost my entire adult life - biggest stupid mistake I've ever made.