LATE BLOOMERS
TECH SPEC
BMW 635CSi
ENGINE: 3453cc
POWER: 218bhp
0-60mph: 7.5secs
TOP SPEED: 132mph
BUY ONE FOR: £6000-£35,000
Rewind to a fairly pleasant evening in October 1989, and there I was buying a tatty but running and MoT’d 1978 Jaguar XJ-S V12 from Witney car auctions for £800. Vying for my £800 was something else though, a 1979 633CSi Auto, also tatty but MoT’d and in metallic Reseda Green metallic, a pale shade that used to fade and hence gained the nickname ‘Receding Green’. The XJ-S won and I ended up doing a comprehensive restoration job on it when new wings and panels were still inexpensive but it could have gone either way. But which car would have won out today?
The 5.3-litre 286bhp XJ-S was launched a year before the E24 633CSi, which
