Car now sold. Thanks for all the interest.


Maybe a bit weird to post this here, but I guess you never know!

As most of you know, I've put a deposit down on a new XKR, and having decided to sell the Range Rover privately, I was going to part exchange my current 2000 XKR against it instead - just because I'm lazy and it's easy!

I'm expecting to pick up the new car on Thursday 28th, so any deal on this one needs to be done by then.

However, I've only managed to get £5,400 in part ex (and that was after some serious haggling) - which is actually quite good for a trade value, but looking around, I can't find an XKR in the country (with less than 80,000 miles on it) for less than £6,450 to buy.

So I thought I'd give forum members a chance to grab a potential bargain.

Details are -

2000 XKR Coupe - Sapphire Blue with Oatmeal leather.

Extras include folding mirrors, CATS adaptive damping, 20" BBS Detroit alloys, HID headlights, clear side indicators and bumper reflectors, red rear bumper reflectors, all interior blubs LED etc.

It has a little over 75,000 miles on the clock (this will change as the car is in daily use) and has been serviced by Jaguar main dealers at 10k, 22k, 29k, 37k, 47k, 54k, 66k and the last one was done at The Jag Centre in Norwich in Oct 2012 at 70,652 miles.

It's got 8 previous owners on the V5, but 3 were the same family - it was registered to a company, then the father (company director) took it, then it went to his son.

In September the car suffered a head gasket failure which caused it to overheat, damaging the cylinder head and a piston and also the radiator. So it's recently had a total rebuild of bank 'A' by Design XKR in Andover (Kevin who runs Design XKR is very well known and respected in Jag circles).

As such, the engine (or half of it at least!) is almost as good as new, and because I thought I was keeping the car at the time it happened, I also had the infamous timing chain tensioners replaced.

The new timing chain kit consists of both top tensioners, both lower tensioners, both straight chain guides, both curved chain guides, and both pairs of upper and lower chains.

I also had a new thermostat and upgraded the water pump (the old style ones were another Achille's heel on these cars) - in addition to the cylinder head, piston, radiator etc. Whilst they had it in bits, they also took the head off to inspect the head gasket on the other bank - which was fine.

The total bill was £3,268! I will provide a full breakdown of everything that was done by Design XKR - or I can give you Kevin's number if you want to talk to him about the work carried out.

So, I paid £7,000 for it in July, and as detailed a further £3,268 on the engine rebuild (I'd rather pretend I can't do the maths on what I'm losing by selling it!) - so it's totally mechanically sound and is a very genuine, rust free, example in great condition for a 13 year old car - and an absolute steal for someone!

Obviously I wasn't planning on changing the car, or I would never have spent all that money on it, but have had a (positive) change in my financial circumstances which now means I can buy the newer XKR.

The only negative on the car is that in the last few weeks it has occasionally shown a 'restricted performance' amber warning from cold start up. It only comes on for about a minute or two and then disappears when the car is warm. It drives beautifully however and I've covered over 1,000 very smooth and trouble free miles since the rebuild.

On speaking with Design XKR further, it seems this is being caused by one of the lambda sensors which is likely to have been caked in crud when the head gasket went. However, Kevin is in Andover and I live in Surrey so I haven't been able to get the car in for him to do the work for me yet (he's told me it's circa £300 worst case scenario to fix).

If end up doing the part exchange deal to the Jag main dealer, I won't have the lambda sensor done - as they can do it at cost.

If I sell to a forum member I'd offer two options - take the car 'as is' for £5,500 and do the lambda yourself (I'm £100 up on my part ex and you can possibly save some money if you're handy with a spanner!) OR pay me £5,800 for the car and I'll get the work done by Kevin - once I've figured out how to get it to him quickly!

Please feel free to call me on 07776 186636 or email joebonnett@yahoo.co.uk

Pics here (please note some of these are from the original ad, so don't show the new bumper reflectors etc, however the overall condition of the car is unchanged since these were taken in July) -