Every publication about the DS420 lists slightly different production/sales figures, but the most comprehensive list comes from the book "Jaguar, a living legend", bij Anders D. Clausager. At the time of publication, Mr. Clausager was an archivist to the British Motor Heritage Trust. In the table below, the column Production is taken from Mr. Clausager's book. Since the book was published in 1990, it does not have figures for 1989-1992. They were deduced from various other sources.

The DS420 was well known for its extensive list of optional accessories, which could increment the basic price of the car by 50%. This web page, and its attached sub-pages, show price information and option lists for each individual year. Also of interest are the prices for the Chassis only car, to be sold to hearse building companies.

The following table lists the basic price of the limousine, including taxes, in GB£ for the UK market. Some rows have two prices, if the given year had price increases (that I know of). The source of the information is given for every year where applicable. Where an entry says Show ... price list you can click through to a page showing the original price and option list (often multiple lists) for the given year. Every price list shows the available options, with their individual price figures. Please note that a given year may have had more price lists, and thus multiple price figures, than shown here.

Right: to Melbourne for the forthcoming royal visit, 1969 (click to enlarge)

The 1992 price is taken from a set of hand written price quotations by Wilcox Limousines; they will be shown if you click on that table entry.

Around 1981 the limousine was again hit by the soaring inflation, because of its labour intensive production. A magazine article (shown on the page with English language articles) touches upon this subject and talks about price cuts together with reorganisations to fight the rising costs. The resulting 12.5% price cut was massive. However, the sales volume before the price cut went up 50% already.

Assembly at the Vanden Plas factory in Kingsbury.
First half of the seventies.
Photos from the archive of the Vanden Plas Owners' Club.

Left: body shells at Browns Lane (click to enlarge)

The best way to deduce the year of construction from the chassis number, is with the help of the PDF-file that is available for download on the My Jaguar page of the web site of the Jaguar Heritage Trust. If your browser can handle PDF-files directly, you may click here for a direct connection to that document on the JHT site.

The following scheme roughly applies:

In 1979 the international VIN number format was adopted, which had a 6-digit number field. A detailed explanation of this VIN number format is on my webpage with various technical illustrations.

Right: Late eighties body shells being assembled at Park Sheet Metal (click to enlarge)

As an aside: some confusion is caused by the fact that the first edition of the Parts Catalogue (publ. nr. JC53) states that chassis numbers for LHD vehicles start from 1M2001 onward; so a 0 digit is missing here. The next edition (publ.nr. RTC9183A) corrects this mistake.

Editions thereafter (publ. nr. RTC9887CC and RTC9887CD) explicitly state "actual commencing date of manufacture 4.7.80" for numbers from 200038 (hearse 400041) on.

Another remark aside: until the end of 1978 the DS420 was assembled at the VandenPlas works in Kingsbury, London. Vanden Plas gave each car a Job Number and the book Vanden Plas Coach Builders by Brian Smith gives more details about these numbers. They started at 12000 and eventually climbed up to around 14500. This number is on a plate attached to the chassis behind the bottom of the grill (facing forward).

From the above table it can be deduced that the majority of the DS420 production has come from VandenPlas. Over the total production period, the average production was less than one car per day.

The very last batch of limos built (Oct/Nov. 1992) was for the Royal family, and for the Heritage Trust. This is the JHT car, L420YAC, VIN 201631; it is (as most JHT cars are) for hire.

You may notice that, although manufactured in 1992, this car has an "L" registration, which is from 1994.

The 1996 Jaguar/Daimler calendar had an airbrush drawing of this car.