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The XJS was the Jaguar's flagship grand tourer throughout the 80's and 90's but they never built an estate version (also known as a shooting brake). To this end, Lynx Engineering, who made replica's of classic Jaguar race cars such as the D-Type, but for the first time they focused on one of Jaguar's custom models.
They never originally planned to do an XJS shooting brake, or to even work on current Jags, but when a customer brought in an XJ6 to be made into a convertible they switched direction. Soon, Lynx Engineering was performing four-seater convertible conversions every two weeks. Business was flying, a niche carved, but Jaguar almost put an end to all this.
Their XJS convertible, introduced in 1988, owed many inspirational cues to Lynx's work but they were still getting orders. So instead of creating convertibles, and started turning the XJS into the Eventer estate.
A sleek V-12 wagon with three doors and all the wood and leather you could muster: how more quintessentially British could one get? But Lynx imbued the XJS with added visibility, rear-seat room, cargo room, and that whiff of exclusivity. Each conversion took 14 weeks. The attention to detail was magnificent. To develop the Eventer, Lynx cut off nearly all of the bodywork aft of the bulkhead, move the fuel tank, raise the rear floor to create a flat surface stretching all the way to the rear seats, and stiffen the suspension to compensate for the center of gravity being raised three inches.
The Eventer was so well made, it may as well have been built by Jaguar themselves with a style that remained faithful to Jag's original intent as possible. Over the course of 20 years Lynx built 67 Eventers with the original prototype going for £28,750 ($40,000) at an auction, while the conversion costed £6,950 in 1983 ($24,000 today), while some original Eventers can go for over £70,000, and was the only Jaguar based shooting brake until the 2004 X-Type Sportwagon and the new XFR Sportbrake came along.
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