03/01/2009 - Jaguar 240 Restoration Part One

JAGUAR 240

In July 2006, fully six months after first taking it for a test drive and concluding it definitely wasn't the car for me, I handed over a wad of used fivers and bought a shabby 1969 Jaguar 240 in Old English White.

Together with my partner Loretta, I run Summer Wine Classic Car Hire Ltd, a classic car rental company which, you might well have guessed, is based in the Summer Wine town of Holmfirth in pennine West Yorkshire. We pride ourselves in having only excellent examples on our fleet and our vehicles are all super smart. Definitely not hire hacks.

The characterful 240 I first test drove in Shropshire in January 2006 was a little scruffy to say the least. But it oozed shabby charm and driving it was like wearing a pair of comfortable old carpet slippers. There was a certain something that was right about it. I just couldn't get out of my mind. So, after thinking about it on and off for many weeks, I went back last July and struck a deal.

My plan was to restore the car to bring it up to the high standards we require of our vehicles before they can go out for self-drive and wedding hire. The challenge was to do it on a budget and without spoiling its aforementioned charm and character. Now, more than a year since I first drove it, the car's extensive refurbishment is complete and ONT 956G is ready to start earning its keep alongside the other four Jaguars on our books.

I bought the car from Tom and Will Swinnerton who run a classic motorcycle business from their family farm in the village of Hales near Market Drayton. The brothers have been dealing in classic bikes since 1983 and have dabbled with classic cars, particularly Jaguars, for almost as long.

The pair are knowledgeable enthusiasts and such is their reputation in the classic bike world, with which have some connections, I was particularly drawn to a silver 1964 Jaguar 3.4 they were advertising on their RWHS Classic Bikes website in summer 2005. I was looking for vehicles to set up Summer Wine Classics at the time and a test drive was soon organised. The car, which actually belonged to Will's girlfriend Judith, had failing synchro on second gear of its Moss box but was otherwise a smart and solid example. A fair price was negotiated and we were delighted with our purchase. So much so that when a white 240 appeared on the RWHS website just before Christmas I was keen to find out more about it.

Will replied to my e-mailed enquiry, saying it was such an appealling old machine they were tempted to keep it (this often happens and there are always cars and bikes stashed away at the farm that are not for sale) but I should nonetheless come down to look at it and have a chat with them.

It turned out the 240's first owner, a Cheshire dairy farmer, had used the car constantly for just over 36 years, racking up 112,000 miles without ever taking it off the road for refurbishment. And there was a stack of MOTs from 1972 to 2005 to prove it. Then, after his death, it had been sold to a neighbour who kept it for less than six months before deciding classic car ownership was not his cup of tea and selling it to the Swinnertons.

Effectively a one owner vehicle, it was a remarkably original. The car's paintwork had a strange patina, rather like a crazed teapot and there was evidence of primitive body repairs behind both its rear wheels. A home-made towbar jutted out from under the back bumper and the overpainted chrome wire wheels were held in place by battered spinners. The interior featured a hand varnished dashtop, frayed and torn carpets and dirty, split and faded leather seats. But it had had very little welding, the shut lines were good and it seemed essentially sound. In fact it was about as honest as 36-year-old cars get.

Charming though it was, we were looking for a second wedding car and it just didn't fit the bill so five minutes into the test run I reluctantly announced I was not going to make an offer. I suspect the brothers were actually rather pleased and after little run out for fun in their remarkably original Series One XJ6 manual and a quick go in Tom's Rover 100 P4 (sorry fellow Jaguar fans but it's a great car too), I was on my way back home with my cheque book intact for the time being at least.

But that of course, was only the beginning of the story, not the end. The deal was finally done and after handing over the cash in appropriate form, I spent an enjoyable few weeks running around in the shabby Jag before biting the bullet and taking it to a bodyshop for what turned out to be a fairly thorough restoration.

Burly Yorkshireman Mark Smith is the proprietor of Devil's Paint Jobs, a specialist motorcycle paint shop on an industrial estate under the shadow of the enormous Emley Moor television mast close to the M1 motorway between Huddersfield and Wakefield. Mark makes his living collecting and repairing and painting the bodywork of crashed motorcycles for insurance companies, but he also paints racing bikes and exotic specials and he is happy to tackle the tinware on classic bike restorations.

Apprentice trained on expensive motors in an old-fashioned bodyshop back in the '70s, Mark also knows his way around cars, especially classics. He looks after the paint and bodywork on the Summer Wine Classics fleet to a high standard. He is sympathetic towards the cars and I trust him to keep my bills down wherever he can, so I had him in mind from the start to restore the 240 for us.

Mark is a direct, no-nonsense type, but he is a perfectionist who brings great care, patience and attention to detail to his work. Restoring the 240 was a challenge he was keen to take on and he greatly enjoyed making replacement body sections for the car and brushing the rust off rare metalworking skills he hadn't practised for many years.

JAGUAR 240

The Jaguar 240 is a car that has always existed out of its own time, and is perhaps only now beginning to receive the appreciation it deserves. The 240 and 340 saloons were dated from the start. Cheapened stop-gap models introduced in late 1967 to extend the life of the Mk II, which was itself heavily based on the Mk I design from the mid 1950s, though not called that then, obviously, they were made to look even more ancient when the sophisticated and long-awaited XJ6 was launched to much acclaim in 1968.

Our Jaguar 240, the 400th from last Mk II bodied car ever made, was sold in April 1969, the month production ceased at Browns Lane. So it was obsolete even as it left the showroom and by the time it passed its first MOT at Garrison Service Station, Salop three years later with 29,436 miles on the clock, it was surely very much yesterday's car.

That is not to say it wasn't likely to have been much admired. Curvaceous and beautiful, the Jaguar Mk II was arguably an instant classic. Young men in the 1970s who had admired them as boys in the 1960s now found them affordable to buy, if not exactly economical to run. And they were also a big hit with bank robbers and the special effects unit of Euston Films! Then, in the early 1980s, the model was at the very vanguard of rapidly rising classic car values.

But the 240 and 340 have always been cheaper and less sought after as classics than so called 'proper' Mk IIs they were derived from. And that is not entirely fair. The 240's unpopularity began ten years earlier when the 2.4 litre model in the original Mk II line-up was found to be rather sluggish and underpowered compared with the sporty 3.4 and fire-breathing 3.8.

Then cost-cutting measures affecting both late Mk IIs and their 240 and 340 derivatives as Jaguar battled to fend off the competition while they got the XJ6 finished and launched, did further harm to its public image. In their drive to keep Mk II sales alive by offering better value for money, Jaguar slashed the price of the new 240 to £1364, virtually the same amount as the original 2.4 in 1956 and more than £200 less than the Mk II's launch price in 1959.

To achieve this they replaced the leather upholstery with Ambla (their own astonishingly leather-like and ultra hard-wearing man-made material), jettisoned the cute picnic tables on the backs of the front seats, replaced the fog lights with horn grilles and fitted cheaper horns while they were at it. Most obviously, the Armco-like wrap around bumpers were replaced by slim affairs with smaller, more modern overiders.

But that was not all. There were improvements too. And that is why the 240 might be considered the best value Jaguar Mk II of all. The short stroke six was given SU carbs like its bigger brothers instead of Solexes, and updated with an E-Type style straight port cylinder head and new ribbed cam covers like the forthcoming XJ6. A new distributor and improved cooling completed the changes and power was boosted from 120 to 133 horsepower. Peak torque was also improved, though it was moved further up the rev range. This, combined with the improved breathing efficiency of the unit made the 240 engine a revvy, sweet-sounding unit that produced creamy power and rewarded spirited driving.

So as a driving car the 240 is possibly the best Mk II of the lot, and Summer Wine Classics' 1969 example features leather upholstery, wire wheels and overdrive which were desirable optional extras. Furthermore, to some eyes the narrow gauge chrome bumpers, based on the S-Type but not dissimilar to those on the E-Type, work even better with the car's beautiful body than the bigger bumpers fitted to the earlier cars.