Magnificent Rustbucket

Westminster blue? - My dad had a Jag that colour.

There is a Youtube video about this car.

I recognise the car from XJ40.com as well, it is in beautiful condition.

Remarkable, thanks for posing it.

It is wishful thinking to blame it on the road. It may be that stretch is a little slippery but having poor tyres has made the difference between the car feeling a little twitchy and going off. You say yourself on this thread that , "it's practically impossible to pull away in the wet without wheelspin, which kicks the traction control in, which is dim-witted and basically just shut the throttle off entirely". You shouldn't drive a powerful old RWD car on poor tyres and this is why. We've all made mistakes and we've all had the car point the wrong way at some point, there's no shame in it. I learned about the importance of good tyres in a 200SX which became wayard like this. Replace the tyres and move on - but don't blame the road, that's silly. Anyway, thankfully the car seems not to be substantially damaged and no one was injured, which is the main thing.

It sounds like Dollywobbler just needs to get some new tyres for it. A powerful old-school RWD car needs good tyres and he says himself a few posts back in this thread that the tyres were poor in the wet. Thankfully no one was injured and damage doesn't sound to be significant, but spinning a car always leaves you a bit shaken. We've all done it at some point.

Look at that 'phone number - from the days when managing to convince the GPO you deserved to be sold a 'phone was really difficult so hardly anyone had one! - It's probably why 'sixties and 'seventies TV shows always have banks of telephones on the big man's desk - to show how powerful he is by having so many 'phones! When I was at school in the sixth form one of the lads had a SAAB like this in a paler green - more of an olive colour. It was a lovely car and I remember it fondly, even though it was falling to bits.

Such handsome cars.

The Jaguar XJ40 Sovereign must be one of only a handful of cars which came with alloy wheels as standard which listed hubcaps as an extra cost option. These stainless steel hubcaps are rare and were £250 extra on the later Sovereign, more on the standard XJ6. I like them but my favourite hubcaps are probably those fitted to the Rolls-Royce Silver clouds and early Silver shadows. ACE wheel discs are splendid things too, from an earlier era.

This to my eye at least has a slight overtone of the Peugeot 505 - another elegantly styled big Peugeot - particularly around the rear pillar and in the relationship of the glass to the body. I like quite a few of Paolo Martin's creations, not just the 604. The 104 was especially neat, the 130 particularly elegant - andd the Camargue remains one of my favourite cars. A friend of my late father owned a Camargue in the early '80s. Riding in a Camargue was such an event even the normal Shadow felt ordinary after it. And who could forget the Ferrari Modulo from Top Trumps?

I've always loved the 604, particularly the earlier ones.

Relatively efficient isn't the same as efficient.

American car's styling in this period was particularly pleasing.

The NHS is valuable and I wouldn't be without it, but it is deluded not to see that it has serious faults to the extent that the care it offers can be poor and when things go wrong its behaviour can be appalling. I have experienced this. Another thing it definitely is not, is efficient.

Lovely car.