The majority of 4.2-litre Series 1 Jaguar XJ6s produced were fitted with an automatic gearbox, but the example modelled utilizes the rarer manual overdrive (MOD) gearbox and came off Jaguar's assembly line at Browns Lane, Coventry, on May 17th, 1972. The first listed owner was Jaguar's Personal Export Division.
They registered the car in Coventry purely so it could be officially exported to the largest of the Canary Islands, Tenerife, where the British gentleman who had ordered it, Mr I. E. Lloyd, was then based. Mr Lloyd specified Sundym glass to make the car more comfortable in the warm climate and regularly drove it back to the UK for servicing.
Mr Lloyd evidently enjoyed the car as he covered 50,000 miles in it and kept it until the late 1980s, by which time he'd moved to the Isle of Man. It was imported into the UK in 2016 and then purchased by well-known Jaguar collector, Mike Birtwistle, who was impressed by its rust-free condition and original red interior.
Mike mechanically recommissioned it, had the sun-bleached paint resprayed and used it for several Jaguar Enthusiast Club events before selling it to a fellow JEC member, West Midlands-based motoring TV producer and journalist, John Lakey, in September 2017. John was delighted as he'd been looking for a 4.2-litre MOD Series 1 in these colours for years and regularly writes about the car in Classic Car Weekly.