JLR And Me

My love of Jaguar’s went back to when I was in my early 20’s and I was discovering that I loved cars. My 1994 Volvo 850 that smelled like wet socks was totaled by a tractor trailer on my way to French class in college and I had to get a replacement.

I ended up with a 1994 318i and something about that car flipped a switch in my head. Maybe it was the manual transmission, maybe it was because I had so many things to take care of on it that I bonded with it? I don’t really know why it happened, but it did. I only found this one small photo of the car, with a primer gray M Sport bumpers and side skirts, and some aftermarket reps of e46 m3 wheels.

With this discovery that I liked cars, I wandered around to see what else might catch my eye, and there was an abandoned 1984 XJ6 at the shop and I thought I should bring it back to life because I thought it was so beautiful. I only drove it a couple of times, and the time I took it to college, it died on me and my dad had to come rescue me with a tow truck.

I thought the Series III XJ was an incredible looking car, and even though I barely drove one and it left me stranded did not deter my fascination. I filed the car away in the back, determined to revive it one day.

This picture is not one I took, it’s one I borrowed from BaT of a very similar car to the one I had.

I dreamed from then on of buying a 2003-2006 Jaguar XKR coupe like the one pictured below. I wanted in British Racing Green, of course, and it was the halo car in my mind.

However, BMW was a far more viable car to play with than Jaguar, far more available. Over the next few years there were a lot of different models that came and went as I explored and flipped cars for profit.

I continued in the vein of thought and action, until I was married in 2013. A few months after the wedding I accidentally purchased a 2006 Supercharged Range Rover. It was the first Rover I had personally owned, and I loved it, outside of the 13 mpg fuel economy of course

The purchase of this car, I always say, was a spiritual intervention. I flipped it, made about $10k off it, and shortly after that the bottom fell out my life as my wife was very sick and was hospitalized. I was entirely unprepared for what it was like to have a partner that was severely ill, but the money from the Range Rover made the first hospitalization less of an extreme event because it gave me the money to pay for medical costs. We had insurance, but there were difficulties because of mistakes made when insurance was set up and it took years for that to get sorted and to get a refund. Insurance company made mistakes, Centra made mistakes, and there were bills we didn’t even know were ours sent to collections. It was very bad, but that first ER visit and hospitalization was paid for in cash from the Range Rover.

My car collecting took a very different turn in the medical years that followed. I reverted back to flipping the cars I knew well, which was primarily Volvo. Money was tight, but for something to do I dredged up the same Xj6 that I fell in love with many years before and I took it home with this dream of swapping in a different engine to match beauty with reliability.

I think I just needed something to focus on. Some far off dream of a possibility was far more important than whether I was actually going to complete it. When I felt especially lost, I would wander out to the car and start taking things off it, cataloging it, cleaning it, and setting it aside for it’s eventual completion.

I continued like this until a tree fell on it, and that was the end.

In searching for something to replace it I tried to find another cheap S3 XJ6, but ended up with a 1993 XJS that I found on Craigslist in Harrisonburg.

I really loved that car too, but it was one that I struggled with because I didn’t have a a place to store it out of the weather. It was getting water intrusion for sitting outside and I didn’t have time to solve it’s very complicated old car problems, so I sold it.


I mostly gave up with JLR after this, and focused more on profitability. It was a hard time and things were difficult. Cars didn’t really bring me any joy, they were more a means to an end. I didn’t have any convertibles, I didn’t have any coupes, and I gravitated towards Volvo wagons. At one point I purchased a 2009 XK, but I didn’t even finish that one, and ended up selling it to someone else in an incomplete form.

Life continued on, and life eventually became more stable. We had been years without any further hospitalizations, my car investments managed to pay off debts, and we were able to move in 2021. With the new house, financial investments that had paid off handsomely, and in 2022 I started buying cars for “joy” again.

In 2023 I purchased my first F-type, and this was my return to Jaguar. The picture below was when I took delivery with one of my best mates Brian being present to give his cynical opinions.

I purchased it wrecked and finding parts was quite a chore due to the rarity and I ended up buying this orange car to be able to get the parts that I needed, but then had a lot of leftover parts.

Then I purchased this green car to utilize the left over parts, delivered on a very snowy day.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had a divorce brewing, and shortly after purchasing the green car everything blew up. The divorce was very hard for me, far worse than even the hospital years, but I found comfort in the ridiculousness of the modern version of the coupe that I had dreamed of owning since I was 21 years old.

I thought it was very ironic that I would coincidentally have the marriage book-ended by JLR, one at the start of the marriage and another at the end. One gave me money to handle stress, and the other gave me something for my mental health.


I tell people that God knew I needed JLR, as they were the ridiculous things I needed to make life a little easier through difficult times.

I would also say thanks to Zach, who has to claim some of not all responsibility for most the Jaguars. He insisted I should buy the XJS, he insisted I should buy the black F-type, and also the Green coupe. I probably would not have bought them if it wasn’t for his encouragement. They were all good emotional investments, and I don’t regret them. We need to have friends to help us make the choices we should make, and not the ones that are the best on paper, and Zach has been one of those people in my life. Haha, he now insists I need to up my game and get a Lotus… we’ll see if that pans out!

Thanks for reading, and I hope to write more soon,

Prolix/Justin

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P.S. In reviving this blog 8 years since my last post, I don’t know what I will do with my old entries. I’m proud of them being written in the midst of the difficult times and they feel like artifacts of my life that I don’t really want to look at much, but I’m proud they exist.

For now, I’ll leave them up.