So, over the weekend I was given an awesome opportunity by an awesome British-only dealership. They have a load of interesting inventory, including Morgans and Caterhams. However, being the quirky place they are, the “truck” of the fleet is a Daimler Double Six. For those uninitiated, it’s just a Jaguar XJ with the V12, but from the great land of The Beatles and beans on toast. Double Six is pretty self explanatory if you can add, which means it’s the V12. I had the pleasure of driving it for a few hours to and fro for a classic car show. How was the experience? British, very British.

First of all, it’s right hand drive. Nothing crazy, just takes a minute of adjusting, and it lets you know you’re in something special. You need that feeling because besides that, all the shitty wood paneling doesn’t scream “class”, but what do you expect for a car from the early 90s. It really is a unicorn in the US, considering it needs to get imported from the U.K. The Diamler was the most expensive Jag you could buy at the time, but somehow it doesn’t quite feel like it. Comparing to an S-Class of similar vintage, it feels kinda puny and delicate, not as solid and robust as I expected. It doesn’t have the road presence I expected, even if everyone is breaking their necks to see me driving on the wrong side of the car.

Now we’ve determined the feeling of the car, lets get to the driving. Being a V12, it makes a healthy 315 hp and a *very* healthy 450 nm of torque. However, all that power is paired to a 3-speed automatic. Why a 3-speed, you ask? Well, because of that torque, the double-six pulls like a freight train. Not super hard, but super consistent. There’s no downshifting because of the 3-speed, which makes the acceleration as linear as possible, but you’re also accelerating on *IT’S* time, not yours. You’ll get up to speed when the car says you’re up to speed, and the only thing you can do is keep the throttle mashed.

It rides fine enough, yet still nothing to write home about. Overall, it’s just an acceptable, interesting classic saloon that you can pick up nowadays for under 20k in the US. Much to my dismay, as hard as it is to admit it, it also shows that the Germans do it better.