I have been lurking on the XJS thread for the past two weeks or so and have been learning a lot.

Have always liked the looks of the car and am thinking of buying a really good pristine one.

I never knew that limited edition models, like the TWR Sport, existed but now I do. And they seem very rare.

I am also starting to fall in love with the Lynx Eventer coachworks versions as shooting brakes. These are also very rare (like 67 RHD and I think 18 LHD).

My whole life I thought that HE stood for Hess & Eisenhardt, as in the coachworks company in the states. I now have learned that it stands for High Efficiency.

So, with this, my question is how does one tell a Hess & Eisenhardt coachworked XJS from a standard one?

 

well to start with, the Hess&Eisenhardt are a coupe converted into a convertible, with folding top.

like most modified jag stuff, the values are not as high as one would think!

about all i know ,the rest of the car is pretty much stock!

 

From wiki.

"From 1986 a full convertible version was available through some dealers, modified by Hess & Eisenhardt in the USA. The Hess & Eisenhardt coachbuilding firm was located in Ohio, USA, and built about 893 of these cars under contract from Jaguar before the official Jaguar-built XJS full convertible appeared in 1988.

The Hess & Eisenhardt convertible differed from the later Jaguar convertible XJS as its unpadded top folded down deeper into the body structure of the car resulting in a cleaner rear profile when the roof was lowered. In order to accommodate this design element, the Hess & Eisenhardt convertibles have two separate fuel tanks, positioned to allow for the roof to fully retract. The process of converting the stock Jaguar XJS coupé into the H&E Convertible included the post-production removal of the roof, cutting the body in several sections, the addition of steel reinforcements behind the driver's seat, and 20 lb (9.1 kg) weights placed just behind the headlights to eliminate harmonic resonance caused by the significant modifications to the car. H&E XJS convertibles are easily identified by the lower folding top, as well as two small badges located just behind the front wheels. The later Jaguar full convertible had a heavier padded top that did not fold into as small a bundle when in the lowered position, but retained nearly all of the original components of the coupé.

The number of H&E Jaguar XJS produced is unknown, partly because a fire at the Hess & Eisenhardt factory destroyed most of the records pertaining to the Jaguar XJS conversions."