Must Go Before Winter: 1950 Jaguar XK 120

Being under the gun to sell anything is hardly an enviable position, and I don’t know that assigning a sense of urgency to a vehicle sale ever actually works (especially if the car in question lingers for a few weeks, thus revealing you didn’t need to sell it that quickly after all.) The Jaguar XK 120 roadster shown here has an interesting history, having been with the same family owner since 1980. That’s also about the same time it was disassembled for a restoration that never happened. Now, the widow of the longtime owner would like to see this forgotten project find a new nome.

The XK 120 has been in Kingston, New York, which is upstate if you’re from the city or downstate if you’re from anywhere else. The climate there is traditional Northeast weather, with plenty of salt slathered on the roads come winter time. However, given the decades it’s spent off the road, perhaps there isn’t as much rust to contend with here as I might have thought. Interestingly, the gentleman who is helping to sell the car on behalf of the widow has known the car since it was purchased by the deceased, and he claims it hasn’t changed much since the day it came home.

That’s too bad, as the XK 120 is a significant car in Jaguar history. As the first sports car since the SS100, it represented a new chapter for the company, which offered it in both roadster and fixed head coupe form. Utilizing a 160 horsepower 3.4L inline-six, the XK 120 may have been the “entry level” model in the lineup, but it still represented excellent performance at the time. The seller claims that most of the parts needed to finish this car are included with the sale, and we can see once-pretty components like these cardinal red seats and door panels, which will hopefully be reused.

This is intriguing: despite the admission that the car has been in pieces for decades, some photos of it when in running condition still apparently existed and are included with the listing. Archival data like this always makes me wonder what happened to put the car in the condition like we currently see it. If it wasn’t rusty, why would you tear it down, piece by piece? I suppose there could have been an overwhelming desire to make the car into a Concours winner at some point, and life simply continued to get in the way. The price seems a touch high to me at the moment, so hopefully the seller is as motivated as they indicate in the listing. Find the XK 120 here on craigslist with an ask of $28,500. Thanks to Barn Finds reader Mitchell G. for the find.