I blame my love of dogs and cats, more particularly Border Collies and Jaguars!!
Brought up on Jaguars (and a Daimler) by my Dad, I was at the time driving a very corroded white XJ40 but really wanted an XJS - but little room for a decent sized dog in the standard XJS? Time to kill whilst early for an appointment one day I nipped into a garage and bought a Jaguar mag, and there it was, 4 page spread of an Eventer, this must be the car of my dreams!?
Later that week I made contact with Lynx, who were still just about in existence in 1999. I was given the contact details of the current owner of a 3.6 Eventer conversion living in the Duchy of Lancaster estate in Lancashire, met up, looked over the car, had a drive but although this one wasn't for sale, the owner's previous car (a 5.3 Eventer then based in Norfolk) was!! I duly contacted the owner living in Diss and agreed provisional purchase details.
I was luckily able to enlist the services of THE Ken Jenkins to meet me and inspect the car prior to finalising purchase. All done and dusted and I brought the car back to Manchester, intruduced it to Fred (my collie at that time) who was highly delighted. The XJS was a 1984 reg., but the Lynx conversion took place in 1989. The car had 145,000 miles on the clock but had been fitted with a new engine by Paramount Jaguar at just over 120,000 miles
I knew at purchase that I would need to invest some serious money to get it back to decent condition and a year or two later took it to Derek Watson Jaguar near Matlock, where Ken Jenkins was then based. Fairly extensive work was carried out both to bodywork and mechanicals and a decision was made that rather than intalling a sun roof (with subsequent loss of headroom) we would install a Targa Roof from a damaged cabriolet that was handily being dismantled at the garage.
One last major job was the replacement of the original 3 speed auto with a more modern 4 speed Jaguar box by Graham Whitehouse Autos in Halesowen. Been both a joy and a drain to my bank balance since!