By Dean Sprague

I always assumed when I was young that if I ever reached my late 60s I wouldn’t care about anything much less cars. My twisted assumption was my advancing maturity would over ride my adolescence but somehow it never happened so I decided it was time to acquire my bucket list dream car, an Aston Martin Vantage. I began the search and my due diligence. Once I learned a little more of course I modified my thinking and there-by narrowed my focus. I abandoned the paddle shifter for manual 6 speeds to improve drivability and endurance. It seems the paddle shifter is not only problematic - typically at 15 thousand miles or so the clutches generally need replacing, a $5500 to $6000 service - I also learned that it’s not very quick on the shifts. Further, after driving the convertible version I found it was almost claustrophobic. That’s ok though, I like the lines of the coupe much better anyway. I also learned that any Vantage V8 built before 2009 was powered by a 380 HP 4.3 V8 verses a 420 HP 4.7 V8 on the later models. Of course that meant I had to find a 2009 to 2012 model (unfortunately anything younger than a 2012 exceeded my budget). I also discovered the electronics are considered primitive by modern standards and quite expensive to repair since they employed a lot of fiber optics. The car also has limited space for luggage, a myriad of quality control issues and not very good fuel mileage. All this of course is off set by the most important factor; it is absolutely sex on wheels!

So I continued my quest undaunted. I spent weeks looking on the web for an outstanding Aston Martin coupe with a 6 speed manual transmission, low mileage, clean Car Fax report and preferably one-owner. I found lots of low mileage cars. I even found a few coupes with manual transmissions but almost no really clean 1-owner cars less than 1500 miles away. I seems these things float from one owner to the next but hardly anyone actually drives them. I was becoming frustrated until one night while looking at a site I noticed a thing at the bottom that said, “If you are looking at this you might like this”. I think Dr. Seuss put it best when he said: “then something when bump”. I saw this ad for a Jaguar not an Aston Martin. You are probably aware that Ford used to own Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin. You may also be aware that the companies shared some of the platforms. For example, the Jaguar XKR shared the same body platform with the Aston Martin DB9 so the cars looked very similar. They changed the front, rear caps, hoods and of course drivetrains etc. The DB9 had a V12 engine and the XKR had a Ford based V8 engine. The Aston Martin version had more power and was a little faster than the XKR. However in 2012 to 2014 (a few in 2015) Jaguar offered a special performance model of the XKR called the XKR-S. It was an enthusiast-based version of the R. It had more horsepower, a lower suspension, a little better aerodynamics, a tuned (rather loud) exhaust, special badging and was a little more powerful than the earlier DB9. In essence it is the street version of the XKR-S GT racing car.

This immediately catalyzed some radical rethinking on my part. Actually, I had never seen one of these bad boys before except in photos. Then I found a review on the car from the UK. They described the car as the “last angry cat”. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to at least look at it. Since the car was at an exotic car dealer in Denver NC, it was just down the road so what harm could it be to just take a look at her? Anyway they said they could find me a nice Aston Martin V8 Vantage if I still wanted one. The ad read; 2015 Jaguar XKR with the S package, 6100 original miles, one owner, heavily optioned, still under factory warranty, part of a estate sale etc., etc. So what the heck I called my friend Dave and off we went to Denver.

When we arrived the car was sitting out front. She was crouched comfortably between a McLaren and a Ferrari. We learned that the car was a special order one for a guy who lived in the Villages, Florida. He bought it new in May of 2015 from Orlando Jaguar. It seemed it was his “bucket list” car so after he ordered the entire Jaguar option list he acquired several after market options as well including an integrated K40 stealth radar system and Lo Jack. Unfortunately after about a year and a half his health failed him and the car was relegated to the Jaguar auction as part of estate liquidation.

We looked the car over and I doubt if anyone ever sat in the rear or the passenger seat for that matter. The car still smelled and looked new. Of course, they were asking more money than I wanted to spend so I left my number and Dave and I went to lunch. However, while I was in the middle of my salad I got a call from the owner of the dealership. Apparently they had the car for several months and wanted to talk again. When I thought more about it I realized a car like this could be a difficult to sell. It’s a classy/polished XK Jaguar that rides hard, goes fast and makes a lot of noise. That could be partially attracting people from conflicting markets but satisfying no one completely. Fortunately due to my love for Jags combined with my innate immaturity it was right down my alley! Let’s see, a car that will go twice as fast as I will probably ever drive it, very noisy, has tires that can’t be rotated, ceramic brakes that will cost a fortune to fix and is so low to the ground you have to watch for road pebbles so you don’t damage the carbon fiber air dams. Exactly, like I said right down my alley.

I told Bev, my wife however that this was a lot more practical than the Vantage (hey that’s true). It has jump seats for grandkids, a prenominal Bowers and Wilkins stereo, dual zone automatic climate control and an automatic transmission (or could be) plus its very comfortable and still under factory warranty. She said she liked all this stuff and the fact it was a Jaguar (I knew this) so she encouraged me to began the negotiation process. This actually took several days before we arrived at an acquisition “package” that worked for the dealership and for us but in the end we drove it away.

We had barely left the dealer’s driveway when she said “pull over I want to drive it”. I thought I misheard her; she has never wanted to drive a new car in an unfamiliar location before! Then while driving she said “you are not selling this one, if you want to you can have my Jaguar XF for a trade and I will keep this in my garage”.

Well, I just took it the Jaguar dealer for its annual maintenance and checkup. When they finished, the service tech came out to tell me that this was a fabulous car in mint condition so I guess it might be a keeper. When have I said that before? Hey, it’s so cool how could I do better so it might happen.