11 used Jaguars to buy if you don’t like the new Type 01 EV

The Jaguar Type 01 is finally here. The Brit firm has reinvented itself for the 21st century, courting no small amount of controversy in the process. You can fully digest the facts, figures and pore over pictures of the finished product here, but what’s not in doubt is that it’s chasing a new, more affluent customer than the Jag norm. One with over £120,000 to spend brand new. Potentially upwards of £150k.

Which is, dear reader, a lot. How so about saving yourself, um, 97 per cent with this second-hand alternative? The XK8 represented a bit of a new dawn itself, essentially launched in tandem with the related Aston Martin DB7 and looking nearly every bit as lovely as it did so. Those craving a trad, V8-powered 2+2 like Jaguars of yore will find solace in its classically Ian Callum silhouette. Especially at just four grand.

Or perhaps you crave the brutish performance of the Jaguar Type 01 but possess too modest a budget to start calculating PCP monthlies. The S-Type R isn’t making its first appearance as a TopGear.com-recommended bargain; Jag’s underrated rival to the Audi RS6 and BMW M5 simply hasn’t morphed into a quietly valuable modern classic like it perhaps deserves to.

The price of chasing retro-coded design, perhaps. It doesn’t age well. Yet five grand for a 400bhp 4.2-litre supercharged V8 and the potential for some enormous skids feels like genuinely smart value – whatever you think of its looks.

Looking far more comfortable in its own, quad-headlamped skin is this 1995, X300-era Jaguar XJR. A 322bhp 4.0-litre straight-six drives the rear wheels alone, “purring all the way through the rev range, accompanied by the glorious sonorous whine of the supercharger, pulling all the way to the red line should you so wish", the ad politely informs us. Performance? 0-62mph in six and bit seconds and an electronically limited 155mph top speed.

This one feels less about handling and more about the effortless waft that Jag’s tried to reinvent with the all-electric Type 01. This £11k XJR will cause much less of a stir on your village fete’s lawn, however…

Jaguar knows the Type 01 won’t please everyone and is only happy to admit it’s created car that won’t be universally loved. Not least because it did precisely that decades ago, the curves and buttresses of the original XJS causing plenty of consternation back in the Seventies when it arrived to replace the more conventionally beautiful E-Type.

There’s a ton of ‘em in the classifieds, replete with hard and soft tops and all manner of powertrains, but we couldn’t resist a full-blooded 5.3-litre V12 with the prettier, pre-facelift looks. This one’s a Japanese import too, to help you shirk rust, though it doesn’t feel like an immediate giveaway at £19,995.

“What else could they do?” Those decrying the Type 01’s ripping up of the traditional Jaguar playbook ought to look at the F-Pace as a very succinct explanation as to why it’s happening. At its core, it’s a pertly sized, slickly styled family SUV that drives pretty fabulously. A necessary car given market trends but done the Jaguar way. Yet even that couldn’t turn the brand’s fortunes around. A complete reinvention was, well, the only option.

In 542bhp SVR form it ranks as one of the very sweetest performance SUVs of the lot. Picking up this subtle silver example for under £30,000 (with a full, approved Jag history) borders on daylight robbery when these cost almost £80k just a handful of years ago.

No more SUVs, don’t worry. Quite the opposite, in fact, this chrome-tastic 1959 XK150 Drophead Coupe boasting twin carburettors and a manual choke for the full classic car inauguration. Jaguar perused all its greatest hits in honing the Type 01, classic XKs among ‘em, and if you squint there’s even a familiarity between their designs, an unashamedly long bonnet teasing your eye towards taut, muscular rear haunches.

The 220bhp of its 3.8-litre straight-six ensues you won’t see which way the 1,015bhp, tri-motor newcomer went. An authentic carb-fed soundtrack, unfiltered with its fabric pram hood down, ensures you won’t care one jot. It’s a bona fide (and beautiful) classic for a smidge under £50k.

We could recommend any number of scarily cheap Jaguar F-Types at this point, prices starting at a piffling £18k. It’s a fabulous car, too; gorgeous whether its roof is fixed or folding and with some raucous powertrains squeezed beneath its sculptured bonnet. Early V8s especially took quite some taming.

It takes barely a moment to find something with a worryingly tempting price, so instead we’ve upped the ante and embraced the modern-day Lister Jag, the LFT 666. The Cambridge firm squeezed another 124bhp (a whole Suzuki Swift Sport!) from the F-Type R’s stock supercharged 5.0-litre V8 before throwing an aggressive new carbon kit at the body and fitting an even louder sports exhaust beneath. A whisker over £80k is big money for a used F-Type, but only 99 were made. Where the new fully electric Type 01 whispers, here’s a big cat that shrieks.

Mind, similar money can also buy you a prime dose of E. The 1961 reveal of the Jaguar E-Type – following a legendary night-long drive to its Geneva motor show stand – changed sports car history forever. How many coupes and roadsters have taken design or dynamic inspiration from it since? And hey, it matched the 150mph top speed of the new Type 01 over sixty years ago.

This one ain’t cheap, but it’s a red Series 1 coupe (the best looking E of all, we say) and has covered a mere 9,000 miles with an extensive history file to verify them. The ad trumpets its first owner, too – racing driver Sir John Whitmore bought this fresh in 1965 and immediately honoured the car’s origin story by whisking it through Europe to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Where he competed in something else, prospective buyers will be delighted to know…

This gorgeous thing is the true inspiration behind Jag’s halo electric car. Not in design, of course. Nope, it’s the chassis folks who took a drive into Jaguar Classic’s leviathan back catalogue of louche, luxurious saloons and coupes and declared the relaxed gait of the XJ Coupe as the purest strain of Jag DNA.

We’ll have to wait to discover how faithfully they’ve replicated it, but at a whisker under £60k (and with a 5.3-litre V12 perched behind its iconic round headlamps) this XJC has the potential to be your properly handsome half-price hero beside a £120k Type 01.

Fine, we’ve sauntered well out of bargain territory now. The price tag here all but matches where the Type 01 will kick off – and for a car that couldn’t look or feel any different, despite being the last saloon Jaguar launched. Morphing the sweet, affordable Jaguar XE into a left-hand-drive only, two-seated circuit headbanger is surely a decision far more unhinged than chasing Taycans and Torcals with a luxury electric capsule.

Yet though its tarmac hugging ride and vast scaffold wing don’t scream ‘comfort’, this proved a better road than track car. “What surprised me most was its polished manners at low speed, the quiet cruising,” crowed the contemporary TopGear.com twin test with a BMW M3 CS. “It made me wonder how Jaguar thinks it will be used by owners. As a daily? It’d do the job.”

Perhaps it’s worth cross-shopping with a Type 01 after all…

We’ve already blown the budget – so let’s go doolally. Half a million quid gets you one of the Nineties supercars and a former ‘fastest car in the world’ – the mighty, 217mph, 542bhp Jaguar XJ220. It’s here not because of its showstopping looks, its vast, twin-turbocharged performance or the fact this example’s being sold directly by Jaguar Classic Works with recent, Grade A servicing to match.

Nope, it’s here to prove that big halo Jags aren’t always a smash hit when new. The XJ220 launched into global financial woe and with several of its early promises quietly reneged on. Jag couldn’t shift ‘em. Three decades on, however, and it’s worth more than its original RRP and looks – quite frankly – sensational. What chance we’re cooing over the Type 01 in precisely the same way when the chimes of Big Ben welcome in 2060?