Somewhere in the world exists a person who decided that a 1998 Jaguar XJ8 needed to have a pickup truck bed instead of four seats. That person created the thing that you see here and now it can be yours. That’s right, possibly the only Jaguar XJ8 Ute on the planet is available to buy right now.
The 1998 Jaguar XJ8 came with a V8 engine factory rated at 290 hp (216 kW) mated to a five-speed automatic transmission and rear-wheel drive. Initially intended as a luxury sedan, the builder of this creation clearly had other goals.
According to the selling dealer, Classic Auto Mall, the car has 93,841 miles on the odometer. With that kind of mileage, we’re very impressed with how clean the interior, what’s left of it anyway, looks. The leather has some wearing but overall the dash, door panels, and upholstery are in great condition.
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On top of that, the engine compartment looks super clean too. Even the customized body panels appear almost factory-finished. The bed itself features a tailgate that operates like any other pickup truck and there’s even a little sliding window from the cabin to the bed. Is all that worth $29,000 though? We can’t be sure and as of this writing, the bidding on eBay hasn’t even met the reserve.
Keep in mind that on the used-car market, the normal version of this car with this kind of mileage goes for around $10,000 all over the place. Maybe it’s the ability to go to a drive-in movie theatre and lay in the back to watch the film that makes this ute worth tens of thousands more than its four-door counterpart.
After a little internet sleuthing, we believe that this is the same Jaguar XJ8 Ute documented on a YouTube channel called David Colvin. There, we see a number of videos of the build process on an XJ8 that looks identical down to the paint color, wheels, and ute body lines. We’ve reached out to the YouTube channel to confirm if these are indeed the same car. Regardless of that, it’s a pretty interesting build.
