1964 Jaguar S-Type

Details

Oldtimer Australia is delighted to confirm the private sale of this 1964 Jaguar S-Type. This factory right hand drive car has been fastidiously restored with a number of modern upgrades to make it a more usable classic.

Background

The Swallow Sidecar Company was founded in 1922 by William Lyons and William Walmsley. In 1934 Lyons formed SS Cars Limited to effectively take over the operation from Walmsley. The SS brand was quite successful, though they had a reputation for having ‘more show than go’. The Jaguar name first appeared as a model name on an SS 2½ Litre Sports Saloon introduced in 1936. For political reasons, Lyons changed the name of his company to Jaguar Cars in 1945.

Whilst the SS100 is indeed a fabulous car, it was the launch of the legendary Jaguar XK120 at the London Motor Show in 1948 that really put Jaguar on the map. The car caused a sensation, which persuaded Jaguar founder and design boss William Lyons to put it into production. The XK120 morphed into the XK140 and ultimately the XK150 and in total, just over 30,000 cars were built over 15 years of production.

In 1961 at the Geneva Motor Show Jaguar introduced the E-Type, which like the XK120 all those years ago, took the motoring world by storm. The body styling was simply gorgeous and technologically the E-Type was an engineering masterpiece and it set new standards in all areas.

Whilst automotive styling is somewhat subjective the E-Type is often ranked atop lists of ‘the most beautiful cars’ and in fact it has been described by Enzo Ferrari as ‘the most beautiful car ever made’.

Whilst the Jaguar name is synonymous for sporting cars it is also recognised for building some of the world’s best luxury saloons. Jaguar was and still is uniquely positioned in the market in this regard.

Jaguar could build sports cars but they were also very successful at building sports saloons. In 1955 the Jaguar Mk1 was introduced to fill a gap in the model range of a small to medium sized luxury saloon. Initially introduced with a 2.4 litre 6-cylinder engine and later a 3.4 litre 6-cylinder engine this model was very successful with some 38,000 examples sold between 1955 and 1959. In 1959 the Mk2 was introduced and whilst visually similar at first glance the ‘new car’ had many improvements over its predecessor. In addition to the 2.4 litre and 3.4 litre engines, the Mk2 was also offered with a 3.8 litre engine as used in the E-Type. Just over 80,000 Mk2’s were built from 1959 to 1967.

Jaguar introduced the S-Type in 1963. It was originally intended to replace the aging Mk2, however, at that time Mk2 sales remained strong and William Lyons decided to sell the S-Type alongside the Mk2 and MkX saloons. The S-Type was a technically more sophisticated development of the Mk2, offering buyers a more luxurious alternative without the size and expense of the MkX. It was available with both the 3.4 litre and 3.8 litre 6-cylinder engine mated to a choice of either a 4 speed manual or 3 speed automatic transmission.

The S-Type was another success story for Jaguar with some 25,000 cars built from 1963 through until 1968. The all new Jaguar XJ-6 finally arrived in September 1968 replacing Jaguar’s aging trio of saloon cars.