Unless your current rig has some serious money in it, I would sell it and buy a manual. Or find a manual that looks like crap but runs great, and swap all your stuff over to it then sell your scrapped XJ.

I have had three automatic XJ's and now I just bought a '99 with the 4.0 and the 5 speed manual trans. I love driving a stick, my daily driver is a stick so they go together but I wouldn't have cared if this was a stick or auto I got it because it was cheap. Good luck if you do it, lots of great info on here to help you out.