Jaguar XK8s are wonderful cars to drive and have a good chance to become a true classic. These cars are 20 to 25 years old and have a number of known issues that may be minor to sort out or major to the point of turning onto a money and time black hole. Thus the single most important decision effecting success is the selection of which individual car to start your Jag journey with. This decision applies equally whether the car is a 4.0 liter, a 4.2 liter or the XKR supercharged version and coupe or convertible.

For success at lower cost one should select a are that has no rust and no ODB codes. There are good postings on Jaguar forums listing the likely places for rust which are a great resource. Your test drive should be long enough (30 minutes or more) such that any recently reset ODB codes are displayed. Codes can be checked with a coder reader like the Autel MaxiAP AP200 for about $60. In addition priority should be placed on low mileage cars. In our case we found a car with 70,000 miles on it. Cars under 100,000 miles are common and there are even examples with 30,000 miles.

Assuming that the car you are considering has no rust or codes and that a test drive reveal’s no disqualifiers then you can evaluate the costs to bring the car up to good working order.

If the car has a 4.0 liter engine it likely has Nikasil nickel-silicon-carbide coating used to create a super-hard, wear-resistant cylinder liners. Nikasil is a fantastic liner but it suffered from failure due to high sulfur fuel used before low sulfur was required. The bad news is that if the car has Nikasil “liners” and used high sulfur fuel then the Nikasil liner could be erroded away which results in poor ring sealing, low compression and hard starting. Cars that start right away are likely OK and as that all fuel has been low sulfur for 2 decades the liner survived. When in doubt have the compression checked. If it has low compression or is hard to start then walk away. The only solution to failed Nikasil liner is to replace the engine. Indeed that is exactly what Jaguar did – they replaced the engines.

Early XK8 came with a 5 speed ZF transmission that was prone to blowing up the A clutch drum as internal fluid valves wore. Look for smooth shifts and an absence of lurches when accelerating. The good news is that Transgo has a replacement valve kit that prevents this failure. But this kit will not fix an already failed clutch drum.

There are other “issues” to consider when selecting your car but in many cases these will be bargaining chips that you can use to negotiate the price lower. This is especially true with secondary timing chain tensioners and upper front suspension mounts. These items will need to be addressed if not already and can be done by the home mechanic at low cost.

The various Jaguar forums are a wealh of information start with https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/xk8-xkr-x100-17/