An entry-level Claas Jaguar 820 forager retails for the wrong side of £100,000. Just over half that sum could secure you a more powerful second-hand model with a maize header thrown in. Sounds attractive, doesn’t it? But if you do decide to buy into used 800-series performance, you need to know what to look out for. Getting it wrong could cost a fortune. James de Havilland investigates

Claas Jaguar self-propelled foragers can trace their ancestry back to the 1970s – almost three decades in which 800-900 units were sold in the UK.

The current generation 800-series was first seen in pre-release form in 1993, production models appearing for the following season. From the outset, the 800-series proved extremely successful, with about 300 finding homes in Britain. This is good news for used buyers because there are plenty to choose from. The bad news is that the wrong machine can make a ruinous second-hand buy.

This is not because the Jaguar 800- series is flawed. Far from it. It has more to do with the running costs of self-propelled machines in general. Unless a minimum of £4.35/ha has been put aside and used for maintenance, these machines can wear expensively and cost a small fortune to get back into good working order.

At this stage it is tempting to suggest you walk away from any 800 offered for sale outside the established Claas dealer network and not backed up by a cast-iron warranty. That is certainly the safest route. But it may not suit you, and it is certainly possible to pick up a decent machine elsewhere.

However, we cannot stress too strongly the importance of having a professional engineer’s report on the machine in question. Even 800-series ‘experts’ will admit to getting their fingers burnt on occasion. We looked over two machines, concentrating on the forager element. The first was a top specification 1997 Jaguar 880 with 1,400 hours – about average for the year and the machine’s high-output specification. The second was the less powerful 860, a 1995 model with a low 2,100 recorded hours.

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