1996 X300 Sovereign 3.2 RHD MANUAL 1 of 3 built

It would have been to do with building them too.

Logstically, manuals are harder to build and more expensive. You can either stock up for space at the line, and have a 2 people paid for (the man who fits it and possibly even a man to pick up the part for him to fit it) to do so, and that's before I get to packaging it. If you are building 100 cars an hour, you can't expect a man to unpack a clutch, a flywheel etc. in that time, so it's a pain.

Again, there's then the machinery to fit the DMF. It would have been easy back then, and even now, the lift-assists to fit them are expensive.

One way around that is to sequence the parts to the line, but that is tricky, messy and thus, expensive. The other way is batch building, but moving 100s of kgs of flywheels won't be easy. You can say just create more space but space is not a cheap thing in the UK.

If you are building alot of manuals, the above is fine, as the economies of scale/price discrimination will trickle down. But if 70% of buyers want autos, the above suddenly becomes very expensive.

Given that Jag were in finacial dire straits, who Ford tried to straighten out in the 90s, it's not a surprise Jag took a deposit.

That looks like a nice example . I had an XJ40 XJR 4.0 many moons ago that I loved. I did debate back then converting it to a manual, purely for 0-60 times, but the Randall handle does work well in a Jag .