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A former director of an electronics company who "got bored", Chris has driven XJ Jaguars for 30 years. He still uses an XJ-S every day, as does his wife. "Our aim was to stimulate the market for people to drive and use old Jaguars on a daily basis. ITV had done a good promotion job with inspector Morse - so we thought the market was acceptant of the idea of a Jaguar as a classic car to drive every day."
"We wanted something we could improve upon so that you can get out of your boring company BMW and get into our car and not have to recalibrate your driving style - you can still go heaving into your favourite corner." KWE build in some roll stiffness without loosing too much of the ride, with adjustable dampers, lower profile tyres on bigger (but rather flash) non-original-style alloy wheels. Most customers want the original pepper pots but the more modern rubber doesn't fit.
"We set out to eliminate the sideways movement that tends to make you want to slow down" says Chris " and we always fit the post 1989 V12 steering rack which gives the steering more feel."
The smoothness and torque of the V12 has made it the most popular option and you can have a later XJ40 four-speed auto or even a five-speed manual, which makes it into a very different sort of car. In many ways the XJ Series is the perfect place to start because the car was so good from the beginning, a world-beater.
"Yes," says Chris, "and also an awful lot of XJ S3s were built. There's a huge spares back-up, perhaps the biggest of all. There are also plenty of Jaguar dealers and independents who can service the cars all around the world. It's got old car glamour combined with the essentials for reliability like fuel injection and disc brakes."
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