Weekend touring with the Bay of Plenty Jaguar Drivers Club

10 November, 2016

The temperamental weather did not put a dampener on the plans that the Bay of Plenty Jaguar Drivers Club had for their weekend trip to Whanganui on Sunday, November 6. Part of their lower North Island tour included a trip on the MV Wairua riverboat as part of the itinerary, which meant that the Whanganui public could come out to view the fine array of Jaguars on display by the Riverboat Centre, drawing out some of the local Jaguar owners as well.

The impressive display started with the unmissable E-Types glistening away under the intermittent sun. For me, my favourite was the Carmen Red V12, which sat their on display in all its magnificence. You just can’t beat the E-Type in red — it’s much like trying to say the word Jaguar without saying it in an English accent. Fortunately I have an English accent so it makes it much easier for me.

The range included a few MKI XKRs made famous by the James Bond film Die Another Day, XKR MKII’s, V8s, E-Types, Mk2s, XK8s, XJSC V12, plus a XJS. The XJS, although desirable to many Jaguar purists, carries a reputation of being unreliable, something that a company in the UK tried to correct by taking old XJSs and improving on everything up to, and including, the big 5.3-litre V12. Alas, the XJS before me was not one of these, but it still looked great amongst the more modern models, and more importantly it had made the journey there.

The event showed the good-natured trusting attitude of the Bay of Plenty Jaguar Drivers Club. They were happy to have their trip on the MV Wairua and let the adoring public roam through the neatly formed aisles — they certainly turned a few heads when the rumbling of V12s and V8s left to continue their journey.

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”

Weekend touring with the Bay of Plenty Jaguar Drivers Club

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