So this may seem like an odd request, but I was curious to know if anyone here knows if when the XK8/XKR was released at the motor show for the first time (Geneva?) if they had a special plate number or anything like that for it, for example the XKE had 77 RW.

Thanks!

 

Interesting question for sure.

I have only seen images from the Geneva launch that show the front or side view. Those were in the Porter book and Motor Trend's website.

No plate on the front in any of those.

 

The E-Type number 77 RW wasn't particularly special other than being an early Coventry registration.

Jaguar built 53 Mechanical Prototypes and 39 Evaluation Prototypes for XK8 before building 101 Verification Prototypes. The Geneva Show Car was Verification Prototype 100 (a Coupe) and the New York Show Car was 101 (a Convertible). Both of these Show Cars then became Press cars. The registration numbers are most likely to have been N445 YRW (Coupe) and N446 YRW (Convertible) as these feature in many contemporary media articles.

There is nothing special about these numbers - they are from the standard sequence. The N prefix indicates a vehicle registered between 1st August 1995 and 31st July 1996 and the suffix RW is the identifier for Coventry under the old UK Vehicle Registration system in use up to 2001.

Graham

 

Graham,
This is exactly what I was looking for, it may seem odd but I'm wanting to register my xkr under the original plate number when it was released, just an interesting bit of history imo

 

If you want documented history maybe consider M532ODU (coupe) or N976RKV (conv). According to the Porter book those registrations were on the evaluation prototypes (built 8 months before Geneva cars) that Jackie Stewart drove. To me that is way cooler than maybe having the right reg for the Geneva cars. Those cars got passed around a lot too after they became press cars.

Graham can you shed any light on why only some are listed in the Porter book with registrations? I am guessing only road tested cars got registered.

Is it possible that registrations were reused after some cars were no longer useful?

 

It's reasonable to suppose that only the road test cars were registered but manufacturers go to great lengths not to draw attention to prototypes. UK registrations are very informative on date range and place of registration. An obvious ploy is to move the same registrations on to subsequent development cars.

Much development work was carried out overseas (Canada for cold weather testing, Arizona for hot weather and Italy for perfomance testing.). The Canada test car can be seen with a Canadian registration.

Graham