JLR Classic is building new C-Types

"The stunning assembly features incredibly rare vehicles as well, like an S.S. (Jaguar) 100, a rare alloy XK120 and beautifully recreated Jaguar XK-SS and D-Type models.

"It also includes a host of beautifully preserved children’s pedal cars as well as a MkX owned by Sir William Lyons himself.

“We are delighted that Jaguar Land Rover has come to an agreement with James Hull to secure the future of this very significant collection of Jaguar and British cars,” said John Edwards, Managing Director of Jaguar's Special Vehicle Operations.

“We share the same objective to keep this unique collection in British hands, and we are delighted this agreement secures their custody for the future”.

Please take note of the last sentence.

Dr Hull was thrilled to put his collection in the care of Jaguar Land Rover. “Travelling all over the world to build the collection over the years has been a labour of love and a life’s work,” he said.

“My primary motivation was to secure the future of the collection in this country … they (Jaguar) are the perfect custodians to take the collection forward and I know it is in safe hands.” Once again, note the last sentence.

"Under the care and maintenance of the Jaguar Classic workshop, a selection of vehicles from the collection can now be viewed at British Motor Museum, Gaydon, and driven on a Classic Driving Experience.”

One hundred and thirty of the cars were Jaguars, we were advised. We were all looking forward to being able to drive not only Jaguars, but others of our youth, if only to see if our rose-coloured specs were actually telling the truth.

Time marches on, and we put the thought to the back of our minds, or at least I did until March 21, 2018 when it was brought back to life by an announcement from Brightwells auction house. They were auctioning off part of the 'Jaguar Collection'.

The 'Warwickshire Collection' was applied to cars sold in three separate auctions.

One hundred cars of various denominations were to be sold plus, another '200 items including pedal cars, planes and die cast models'.

More specifically, amongst the 150 pedal cars, was an electric Bentley which sold for £9020, fifteen model aircraft from £220 for a WW1 monoplane and a whopping 20 foot span Hercules which made £880. There was other detritus such as three caravans and boats.

After this tasty starter came the main course. One hundred cars from Austin to Vanden Plas with prices from £330 to

£15,000. The main part was selling for under £4000 and indeed the total raised was £391,960 - an average of £3920 per car, model et al.

The old James Hull collection was now down to 430 cars it seemed.

But wait! Lockdown was with us, and auctions went on. Classic Car Auctions sent me details of a sale which included 'cars from a private collection' which they told me were from Jaguar. Only nine cars, but from a Daimler Conquest, a 1966 Daimler VDP (£6882), a 1969 XJ6 S1 (£3,108) to a rather nice 1996 XJ-S Convertible for £27,195.

Now it was reduced to 421 cars and counting, or more to the point 121

Jaguars and Daimlers. Another £67,155 raised, with two no-sales.

Furthermore, in July 2020 Silverstone Classic had sold another nineteen exHull cars, including five Citroens, (even several Chapron convertibles) for up to £150,000 each plus other rather tasty cars. A LHD XJ220 fetched £210,000, an Alvis TE21 £51,750 and so on.

Several failed to sell, which seemed strange, including a 1949 Alfa Romeo 6C, a 1968 Bentley and a beautiful 1953 Allard Woody estate. Despite those failures, the rest sold for a healthy £937,000 including the XJ220.

01 The business built what it claimed to be 'missing' XK-SS chassis. Their research and claims were sketchy, and the cars not fully accurate.

02/03 It also staged and promoted its own race series. It featured a number of cars which were claimed to be genuine originals but were replicas - which it now claims to abhor.

Jaguar, have you kept the unsold cars or were they also quickly shuffled off? So we are left with 120 now.

The auction blurb said: “In recent years this car has formed part of a large collection” and the sale numbers are jumbled up with other sales. The more we delve the more we find.

Classic Car Auctions sold another eighty-nine cars on September 19, 2020 from the 'Warwickshire Collection', none of them Jaguars this time, but some really interesting everyman cars such as a Hillman Minx Estate, Rover P6 Estate conversion for under £6000, a 450 SLC for £13,000, a Triumph 2500 Estate for under £4000 – the list goes on and on.

They had diminished the collection by another eighty cars, nine not sold, and added £768,728 to the JLR coffers.

In their Spring Sale 2021 Classic Car Auctions sold yet another forty Jaguars and Daimlers from the 'Warwickshire Collection'. They included a superb Lynx Eventer for a mere £47,000 and a superb XJ6 S1 manual overdrive for £10,268. The buying dealer of the Eventer, if he/she were such, would have put it on the forecourt for double that.

The selling off of the non-Jaguars was perhaps understandable - but only perhaps - since the promise was to keep the whole collection together. The sale of these forty cars can only be considered a heinous crime; but another forty Jaguars gone for £366,780.

01 JLR Classic occupies huge and spotless new premises in Coventry.

02/03 Both cars are brand new and were built by the Company this century.

04 It has even been selling off brand new fully factory painted 1970s Series 2 XJ bodyshells to some very fortunate owners.

Do I need to go on? Perhaps not, but there are a number of other auctions of the Jaguar Collection at CCA and Silverstone. The last was at the NEC Practical Classics Show last March where JLR sold another twenty-nine.

Some time back, JLR Classic announced they were going to refurbish early Range Rovers and Landies so started buying stock. Judging from this sale they have done an about turn.

Seven Range Rover chassis with engines, all completely refurbished, were sold, prices ranging from £14-25,000, depending on the year and model. I reckon the refurb cost at least that. Did you need a brand spanking new body shell for your S2 XJ6? £3,800 to you sir. An XJ6 S2 V12 Coupé for £8,550?

Whatever, another £156,250 was in the JLR Classic coffers, and, if we count the body shells, we are down to seventy-nine cars. I am led to believe, be it but a rumour, that JLR Classic sold a further collection of eighteen cars which were promptly resold a month later at a timed auction by Silverstone Classics.

This was, I was told by the auction house, a private auction and nothing has appeared on their site to indicate the sale ever took place. But a bit of internet sleuthing worked wonders. All but three of the cars sold for a total of £590,000 this excluding a Ford GT and SLR McLaren which the vendor owned and fetched £424,125 on their own.

I think you are getting the gist of my concern. I have tried to contact Jaguar Classic by phone and email to no avail. In 2014 JLR Classic stated the James Hull Collection would be kept together, but in dribs and drabs we have seen sales of part of the Collection. What has happened to the rest of the models and planes? They were numerous I believe. What has happened to the fabled Driving Experience including the more mundane cars?

Let me get to the crux of the matter: money.

I have no idea how much Jaguar have recouped from these sales, but my guess is around £5 million. The forty cars sold on May 26, 2021 made £366,780, an average of £9,170 per car.

If the 543 cars purchased, ignoring for the moment the models and caravans which were selling for peanuts, averaged £10,000, we arrive at the hypothetical purchase of the collection.

But they aren’t selling for that; nowhere near to be frank, except for the Jaguars and a few others. So, if the Hull Collection cost circa £60 million, they have recouped £5 million. Can JLR Classics explain where is the remaining inventory to account for the other £55 million?

Of course, that would be considerably reduced by the sale of their replica C, D and XK-SS cars. They had to be sold if they were to proceed with their court case against the Magnussons for the 'real' C-Type replicas they were building. A pot can’t call the kettle black now, can it?

Indeed, the not-for-sale prototype D-Type Jaguar built and then sold, is now once again on the market at £495,000, so let’s say £1.5 million for the three. With the figures quoted above, that rounds up to the £5 million I have quoted.

I must explain that I am only working from information supplied by the auction houses, and perhaps there is the odd car that maybe wasn’t part of the Hull Collection, but if so, what on earth was Jaguar doing and how had they acquired them?

05 Again, you have to scratch your head and wonder about JLR Classic's ethos. Why would it be owning, preparing and selling a non-factory Mk2 heavily modified with modern running gear and chopped into a two door convertible? It is impossible imagining Ferrari Classiche Department doing such a thing. Ferrari Classiche offers its clients a first-class restoration service and issues Certificates of Authenticity while being totally open to exposing and even destroying fake Ferraris.

01 One most memorable occasion for JLR Classic was the visit in 2017 of these five D-Types which were en route to the Goodwood Revival. Car number #15 belonged to Clive Beecham, who also owned the Bedford van tribute to Jaguar's own lost near identical machine.

02/03 It's not difficult to conclude Jaguar changed as a business from the moment its traditional 'home' was vacated, shot up in an SAS exercise and finally demolished late in 2008.

04 You have to ask why the official musuem could not have been retained - or at least replaced by another Jaguar-only premises.

It isn’t in any way part of their ethos or business model. If, as I believe, they are all part of the said Collection, why have they broken their promise to keep it together?

What cars are left? So many questions. So few answers. There can’t be more than about fifty out of the 530. I am aware twenty cars were sold to JLR employees, so am sure JLR Classics can confirm it.

In my research I know that before suing the Magnussons JLR Classic owned three replicas themselves. They were regularly in use, and all were previously part of the Hull Collection. Their D-Type was sold by Silverstone Auctions on May 23, 2020 for £390,500. The XK-SS registered DS 11 was sold, I am told, to a prominent person.

The Peter Jaye C-Type '824 DOT' I am unable to trace, but in the light of the case against the Magnusson family for breach of copyright I assume that Jaguar would not have held on to it.

The last I heard a Peter Jaye car he built some years ago had, for some reason, been dismantled and was offered for sale in that state for approximately £200,000. I have no idea what has happened to it. Can Jaguar elucidate please?

My final thought is this; is there a future for JLR Classics? They have run out of old models to recreate, they have made rather curious copies of very early E-Types 77RW and 9600 HP.

Depending on who you talk to, they have or haven’t been sold at the inordinately expensive price of £800,000 the pair. They are not in their original colours, nor from 1961.

One does wonder what the staff, if there are many remaining, have to do each and every day. The overheads of the three buildings must be enormous.

There are rumours they are closing them down and moving to Castle Bromwich which would at least reduce standing charges. Were all of the cars sold off just to pay the wages and keep the lights burning? I have no idea, but it is a thought, isn’t it?

I would be most grateful if Jaguar would, if in any way I have erred, advise me of my transgression(s) so I might make a full and public apology.

I have written to them before, but have never received a reply. None of the above has been written with any reason except to point out the curious acquisition and what has happened since.

From NEW ZEALAND's original Jaguar distributor plus daimler