“ Yes, that Princess, in THAT dress, in this car. This is the personal limousine of arguably the world's most famous, iconic and inspirational woman. ”
Maintained by Jaguar Kensington, 1 former keeper, dry-stored, rust-free, valid MoT.

Background
Bear with us while we tell you about the model of car we have for you today.

We know you’d rather read the more interesting bits of this very special story.

We urge you to be patient.

We’ll be as brief as we can.

The XJ40, which had been in development from as early as 1972 and was the most extensively tested car in Jaguar’s illustrious history, was intended to metaphorically slap its Teutonic rivals lightly across both cheeks with a Browns Lane duelling glove and restore national pride.

But ‘pride’ was a seldom-heard word in the British motor industry of the era and the unfortunate XJ40 happened to emerge at a time when a lot of ambient negativity and bad press was looking for a shiny surface to stick to.

The reality is that the XJ40 was actually a very good car struggling to overcome a poor reputation that was, for the most part, rather undeserved.

Owners found that if they happened to stumble across a decent example, it was easily the equal of its Germanic competitors and had a ride quality that none of its rivals could hope to emulate.

That enough?

Overview
On the 29th June 1994, the most famous woman in the world stepped out of a car in a jaw-dropping dress designed to make a punchy and unmistakably defiant statement in front of the world’s media.

The occasion was a Vanity Fair fundraising evening at the Serpentine Gallery.

The woman was Princess Diana.

The ‘Revenge Dress’ was a loud and proud rebuke to her husband, the future King Charles III, who had earlier that same day made a televised confession of marital infidelity to Jonathan Dimbleby.

And the car was the very Jaguar XJ40 Sovereign 4-litre we have at our Oxfordshire HQ today.

Don’t just take our word for it – the pictures and videos of Diana leaving the car were wired around the world to every news desk in every city on every continent.

There’s more evidence of this car’s provenance than you could ever need.

And she didn’t use the car on just that occasion.

Far from it.

It was in regular and frequent use from when it was delivered new by Jaguar Cars themselves (not via a mere dealer) to Diana’s household as part of the royal fleet in March 1994.

Among many other filmed and photographed instances of Diana with this car, there are images of her arriving at the Royal School for the Blind in Leatherhead in January 1995, and footage of her arriving at and departing from Brown’s Hotel in January 1996.

As for the car itself, it’s in pretty good condition and has an impressively low indicated mileage of 45,000 miles.

It starts, runs and drives with all the smoothness and breeding associated with the model and the marque, and it needs little more than some cosmetic TLC here and there.

With the royal fleet as the car’s one and only former keeper, the vendor bought the car in February 1997, just six months before Diana’s tragic death in Paris.

He has kept the car warm and dry in a heated garage ever since, adding very few miles to the odometer in the intervening years – as evidenced by the fact that the mileage in 2006 was 38,000.

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