Just how mechanically bad is a mid 1980's Jaguar?

Factual Questions
1

I remember in the mid 1980’s when someone told me that their relatives had bought a 1986 new Jaguar XJ12, and had to return it because of the massive mechanical problems.

I’ve also heard joking references from places like Click & Clack where they make fun of the maintanence requirements for an 86’ Jaguar.

So how “bad” were these mid 1980’s British cars? Was it mainly the 12 cylinders, or were they all problematic? And what happened to British cars (at least those sold in the US, which is pretty much just Jaguar and a few extreme brands) in this period?

2

Mismanagement, U.S. regulations, and foreign competition, I think. MG (BMC) were arch-rivals. And yet they became stablemates under British Leyland. The MGB was introduced in 1962. Nearly a decade later they were a bit long in the tooth. There was a plan to replace the B-series engine with an O-series, but that idea was nixed by management. They’d rather put money into the Triumph brand. The MGB soldiered on until 1980, but by that time ever more stringent U.S. regulations (the U.S. was the major customer) strangled the fairly-decent 95 hp motor to 62 hp. It just couldn’t compete. Triumph had its TR6, but while it performed well it wasn’t especially well built. And Nissan brought out the Datsun 240Z that pretty much kicked the TR’s butt. And the fuel crisis in the early-to-mid-'70s didn’t help. So what did BL do? They made the TR7. Someone said the styling would be dated in six months. It just wasn’t ‘British’. Worse, it was not offered in a drop-top. And most egregious, it had less power than the car it was replacing. By the time the TR8 and convertible came out, it was too late.

The British always liked to do things as cheaply as possible. (As most carmakers do.) But ISTM that they were penny-wise and pound-foolish. They did not invest money early on to reap benefits later, but kept using the same old technology because the investment would have been too high. There were also several union strikes, which hurt production and drove up costs.

In the end their products were becoming more expensive and less capable, while the Japanese were providing performance and reliability in their Z-cars for a reasonable price.

3

Douglas Adams, in his Dirk Gently books, quips that Dirk drives a Jaguar from the days when they had to stop for repairs more often than they had to stop for petrol.

4

That should read ‘MG (BMC) and Triumph were arch-rivals.’

5

The XJ12 and XJS certainly were that bad. The electrics are suprisingly sound, though - mostly because unlike the other British marques, Bosch supplied most of Jaguar’s electrical components, like the fuel injection system. Other British manufacturers, including the other BL marques, used British-made Lucas parts, which were horribly unreliable.

Johnny LA pretty much nailed the second part of the question; essentially, what happened to the British motor industry was British Leyland. It was basically a merger of all the important British-owned car manufacturers under the auspices of the Labour government, with the idea being that successful (and profitable) Leyland would be able to revive the rest of the British motor industry, which was struggling.

It might have worked, except that in 1975 it was partly nationalized, and the British motor industry had most of the same problems in the seventies that the US industry has today - a mostly unionized workforce, with the associated increases in manufacturing costs and so on.

Of course, during the seventies, most of Britain was going on strike half the time anyway. BL management probably spent more time negotiating with the trade unions than it did planning new cars and so on, with the predictable result being that the cars that did actually get build were poorly designed, poorly built, and largely thought out with little or no regard for consumer demand or market trends.

In addition, lots of the consolidated brand names were previously competing with each other, and BL made little or no effort to rebrand them or keep them from competing on price.

In effect, each brand was stealing market share from the other BL brands rather than competing with non-BL entities.

Into this clusterfuck arrived the Japanese, who were making cars just as cheaply as the British, but without the shitty build quality. And with less beige in the interiors.

The eventual result was that during the 80s, the BL brands (and BL itself) were slowly divested and sold off, until one day Honda was the majority owner of the (then-renamed) Rover Group, which has itself been sold off piecemeal to the point where nobody really knows who owns what.

A Chinese company owns about half of the old BL brands, but most of them haven’t actually been used in over 20 years (like Triumph, Wolseley, BSA, MG, Morris, Rover, and so on), and the original factories have all been sold off or knocked down. Rover’s Cowley plant is still in use- that’s where the current Mini is built- but AFAIK that’s all that’s left of BL.

It’s not as though there are no carmakers in Britain; Ford, GM, BMW, and all the Japanese companies have factories or design studios there. Ford’s European operations are mostly run from Britain, although few of the cars are actually built in Britain. Vauxhall, which has been around since something like 1921, is GM’s UK subsidiary and sells the models which are badged as Opels in Europe in Britain; they’re also responsible for designing most of them.

Until fairly recently, sports car manufacturer TVR was thriving as an independent company, but has since gone bust and is now owned and operated by a Russian kid.

There’s still Morgan, which builds horribly old-fashioned cars out of wood and sticks a whacking great V8 in them. I hate the things, but there’s a ridiculous waiting list for their classic models - something like 2 years, I think. My dad ordered a Morgan in 1981, then found out he was having a second child (me), and sold his spot in the order queue for several hundred pounds- a not inconsequential sum at the time.

ETA: Forgot to mention- Rolls-Royce and Bentley soldiered on as British-owned companies (subsidiaries of the aerospace company Vickers, which is now BAe) until 1995 or so. Now they’re owned by BMW and VW, respectively.

6

Aston Martin is back in British hands.

7

I worked on Jaguars at a dealership in '84-'85. The series III XJ6 was a reliable car. We had very few of them come in on a hook. The XJS (V-12) had a slightly worse repair experience (fuel tanks leaked, and there was a recall on the fuel injection system) but over all pretty reliable.
Then for 1986 Jag came out with the New XJ6 Everyone expected it to build on the quality of the series III. Instead it was worse by at least an order of magnitude. Jag had an 8 hour recall to fix electrical problems on them. :eek:
Mechanically they were about as good as anything else sold back then. The straight six had been around since 1949 or so, and was well sorted out. The transmission was Borg Warner and used by a bunch of different car makes. Suspension was fairly straight forward expect for the rear inboard disc brakes.
I will freely admit that Jags are quirky. Very Quirky.

8

Well, there was also the minor matter of the UK economy being on the verge of collapse after the oil shocks and general mismanagement. The government had to ask the IMF for a bail-out in 1976. Blaming it all on the unions is a bit of an oversimplification.

One telling anecdote, from those nice people at Ford who bought Jaguar in 1989.

9

I suppose it came across a bit like that, but yes, general mismanagement certainly had a lot to do with it. I’m not sure how much you can blame on Britain’s economy; after all, many Western economies were in the toilet during the seventies.

The fact that BL had virtually no market outside of Britain probably didn’t help either, which, again, is largely due to mismanagement.

10

Well, they had a foreign market. A big one. But unlike the Japanese who in some cases were meeting U.S. emissions regulations before there were regulations, the British were using old-tech engines and tried to clean them up with power-robbing add-ons. (The Japanese did too, but ISTM that they had less to clean up. IIRC the original Honda CVCC didn’t need antipolution controls at first.) British cars in the U.S. were mostly sports cars (MG, Triumph, Austin-Healey, et al.) and luxury models. You’d see occasional economy models like the Austin Mini or sedans like the MG Magnette, but most of their sales were the sports cars. They never gained a foothold in the ‘everyman’s car’ market. So when the Z-cars came out they took a hit.

In fairness, the U.S. carmakers were also short-sighted. But given the choice of high-quality, fuel-efficient Japanese models, poorer-quality less-fuel-efficient, and too-big domestic cars, or stylish English cars with mediocre fuel efficiency, ‘quirky’ reliability, and not as much power, Americans chose Japanese and American ones. Is it fair to accuse the British carmakers of short-sightedness for not capitalising on their sports car inroads and introducing sedans and coupés on a large scale in the U.S.? The Japanese did it the other way round, and the Italians were somewhat successful at it. But Porscne only sold sports cars and they sold well through the '70s and still do. But a Triumph isn’t a Porsche. With the economic troubles of the '70s people with money would still buy Porsches. People with less money would choose a more practical Japanese product instead of a sports car.

But IMO their failure was putting competing marques under the same corporate umbrella, resting on their laurels from the previous decade, and failing to invest in the future and building cars the American market wanted.

11

If you EVER had to tune one of those old 6-cylinder Jags (with the 3 SU carb set-ups), you will know frustration-it takes about 2 hours.
Mechanically the cars were OK, but the electrical systems were terrible. Plus, everything was jammed into a very small engine compartment-you needed to disassemble a lot of stuff to get at things.
All of which added up to massive repair bills.

12

Yep. There was no part whatsoever on a Jaguar that could be accessed without removing three other parts first. :wink:

13

Well, to be fair, Porsche very nearly went out of business in the early 90s itself- it was saved by the 968 Club Sport.

14

Here is a website that shows year by year what problems to look out for, at least for the XJ6-8 model. I’ve been really tempted to get a mid 90’s xj6. I’m worried about the reliability too, but this website seems to suggest that starting in '95, the cars were pretty well sorted out. It’s just hard to see a 12 year old car that looks perfect and originally sold for 50 grand, now available for 5, and not wonder what is wrong with it.

15

You wouldn’t have known it in L.A.! The place was crawling with them. (I assume it still is.)

16

L.A., London, Monte Carlo, etc. will always be full of Porsches… but during the early 90s, under Arno Bohn, the company was hemmorhaging money and was the subject of several takeover talks. Had it not been for the extensive cash reserves the company built up in the 80s boom years, it would probably today be a subsidiary of Daimler-Chrysler or VW.

It wasn’t until Wendell Wiedeking took over at the end of 1993, and axed most of the loss-leading programs- the stillborn 989 sedan/saloon, and various racing programs, including the entire Group C racing division (which was shut down by FIA after '93 anyway)- that the company became profitable again, and in fact today is in fact the largest single shareholder in VW.