'

You're a dam good friend for doing that work on the car for your buddy.
Hope he is paying you or you at least get a gift card.

You're lost your mind my friend, j/k. lol

Ok, maybe not the most reliable car around.
AND- Yeah, it might be a challenge getting some parts and someone to work on it.

BUT it's a Jag and has the Cooooooooolness factor.
Only the Euro cars can pull off that kind of awesomeness of styling! Oh yeah, rite on! lol

 

I highly doubt reliability was high on the guys mind

 

Apparently not LOL.

 

Paint looks fine to me from a glance at least.

 

Well this one and most other XJRs would prove you wrong, nothing leaks or fails to work. The cheap ones yeah really bad but the top end cars are not very different from their rivals of a given year.

 

It wasn't, the power and looks were. Reliability can be left to boring stuff like Lexus, his daily is an ES350 vs this thing.

Sad an 04 jag is a fast as the best Lexus makes lol! He plans to tune it to 500hp or so and is targeting a 4.0 flat 0-60

 

It's okay, it is very smooth now but there are void/chips I can't do anything about. If you really get up close you can see the trouble zones but it's massively improved, before you had insane swirling from 15ft away


Stuff like this

And this is no problem as well as any swirls/holograms/etc

But this can't easily be fixed

This is about as good as it can get

 

I've had faster....much faster. Was cool until it started leaking.

 

Cool, it's his first real car so be nice.

Leaks are not really that bad if you have any sort of skills working on cars and this one doesn't have any.

Everyone starts somewhere so I'm curious where you were at our age since I think we are doing well. Bikes don't count

 

1989 BMW 325i 4 door manual and a 1986 Honda Prelude Si manual were my first cars... Both were reliable and fast for the time. Both considered classics now.

 

Nice, good starting points

My group didn't start that well but the 2nd round of cars was much better and now we are all in 400-650hp cars before 28. Took us a while since the original lineup was my 03 truck, a Pontiac G6, an 05 civic LX and an RX300...

By our early 20s I had moved to a 2017 ram, one friend went to a 07 fusion, the ES350 for another, and my wife was still in a RX300.

When I joined here it coincided with my first actual car in the form of an LS430 to see if I liked the concept. I loved it and the next year bought the 4.0A8, year after that the 460, and last year the W12. I'm planning on an R8 late this year

 

BMWs were very reliable then, crazy to think. I remember an E34 525i coming into a car wash once with 250k on it, still was in great shape inside and out. It was when they started making V8s and that nightmare known as the 750iL when they started getting finicky. The 735s were solid.

I'm sure your BMW was just a blast to drive. No stability or traction crap, just ABS. Light car, manual transmission, perfect weight balance (I'm sure, or close), ungodly steering feel. Those were the days.

 

It fishtailed in the rain on me numerous times! I could pop the clutch and spin the tires like crazy. Weird now thinking 168ish hp was a lot back then. It really did have good steering feel!

 

168hp is plennnnnty when the car weighs 2800lbs. That is seriously light, I double checked.

 

Maybe I'm just getting old...but I am finding I will take lighter weight vs more power. I've had some powerful vehicles M550i, 992 Carrera S, Cayenne Turbo, LC 500, RC F, GS F. Most of that power goes unused in daily driving. Two of the most fun were a Miata and a 718 GTS 4 cylinder. You can in your daily driving take some fast turns. I am actually enjoying the 23 IS 350 F Sport with sport handling packing more than I've enjoyed a car in a while weirdly enough. More than GS F and LC 500. It turns, brakes, and handles great. I finally got it broke in this week and gave it the beans...not going to throw you back in your seat or win many races....but it's still fun to drive. Just something I've figured out about what I like as I get older.