According to my SCM pocket price guide, this car is worth AT LEAST $1,000,000. Yes, that says One Million Dollars. Feel free to hold up a pinky and impersonate Dr. Evil when you say that. Add to that fact a footnote which says “a car with all its original parts and no stories will bring three to four times that of a “bitsa” with only a few authentic parts.”
I had a chance to look over this car very closely prior to this … um… incident, and it appeared to be very original. The car had a wonderful patina and it appeared to be a survivor. Here is what happened as I understand it: On day two of the 2005 Colorado Grand, the owner of this car stopped in Telluride for some morning coffee as the rally left for Ouray and Durango. This was the day that we went intentionally off-route and the little Alfa SZ-1 punctured its gas tank on a chunk of rebar. Yes, two “ouches” in one day! A lady in an SUV backed into the bonnet of this Jaguar while leaving her parking space.
Mind you, only sixteen (though I have also heard the number 18) Jaguar XK-SS cars ever left the factory in Coventry. The XK-SS is therefore probably the most rare and valuable Jaguar car (with the possible exception of the XJ-13, of which only one exists.) A factory fire in the winter of 1957 destroyed all the tooling and remaining D-types which were being converted into XK-SS models. This car has a value somewhere between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000… possibly even more. So imagine what happened to the lady when she called her insurance company to report the “fender bender” or in this case “Bonnet bender”…
“Hello, Biginsuranceco, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I had a little accident.
“Is everybody OK? Can I have your policy number ma’am?”
“Yes, I’m fine, nobody got hurt. My policy number is (blah, blah, blah.)”
clickety-click “OK, here we go, I have your file. So tell me what happened.”
“Well, I stopped at Starbucks and climbed back into my Tahoe and started to back out of my space. I swear I didn’t see this little tiny car anywhere in my mirrors.”
“Alright, what happened next?”
“Anyway, I just barely tapped this eensy-weensy little sports car’s front side. It is barely a scratch! I swear, men are so hung up about cars… you would think the guy was going to have a heart attack, or cry or something. I apologized, but jeez!
“OK Ma’am, can I have the make and model of the car you hit?
“I didn’t HIT it, I barely scratched it!
“Sure ma’am… the make and model please?”
“I think he said it was a Jag-yooo-war.”
“clickety-click “OK, Jaguar. What model? XK8?”
“Something like that… XK-something… hold on, I have it written down, in fact it said it right above the scratch…”
“Take your time ma’am.”
“Here it is! XK-SS.”
clickety-click “I don’t have the model in my computer.. I have XK8, XKR, XJ, even XKE, but those are real old. Did the owner state what year it was?”
“Um, yeah… hang on… 1956”
“OK, bear with me, I have to do a special query for anything older than 1967. Just a moment…” clickety-click
“Is this going to take long? I have to pick up my children from soccer practice.”
clickety-click “Just a moment ma’am, we’ll have this wrapped up as soon as possible.” clickety-click
“That guy was so annoying… you would have thought I ran over his kid… “
clickety-click “uh-oh”
“Pardon me?”
“I said ‘uh-oh'”
“What do you mean… ‘uh-oh’?”
“I don’t know how to say this ma’am, other than… you just hit a car worth over one million dollars.”
*thud*
Imagine what her premiums are now? Will anyone even insure her? Did her husband leave her? The possibilities are endless. Discuss…
damn – so do you know how the repair went in the end?
mind you the XK owners premiums and excess must be huge also!!!!!
Jerome
Oi. That’s gotta suck.
And, yes, I realize correlation is not causation, but it does seem that a statistically significant number of times I’ve been nearly run over on my motorcycle it’s been a woman in an SUV, usually on a cell phone. On the other hand, when I went tumbling down the freeway at 70, the person who didn’t run me over in spite of me crashing down right in front of their car was a lady in an SUV as well. Pointless story, anyway.
I’m here because somewhere out there on the web you mentioned a desire to stuff a VW TDI motor in a Lotus Elise, and I wanted to tell you how amazingly gratifying it is knowing that I’m not the only loony who’s had that very same idea. 🙂
I’ve always said that if I die prematurely that it will be wadded up insidemy E-type into the wheel well of a GMC Yukon, whose cell-phone yakking, latte sipping, yelling-at-the-rugrats-in-the-rear-seats soccer mom who just ran the red light.
And yes “ilcylic” I really want to drop a TDI in an Elise. The benefits (light weight, hyper-mileage, and serious fun) are just too obvious to ignore. Welcome to the looney bin. Join in the guessing games and banter.
–chuck
No Jerome, I don’t know how the repair went.
Insurance for collector cars is not that expensive though. Given how little they are actually driven in ratio to their value, they are a very safe bet for the insurance company. Besides, in THIS case the lady who hit the Jaguar… it is HER insurance company that is footing the bill!
–chuck
I doubt that it really would that averse affect on her, unfortunately. Probably in some secret database she’s marked as being “costly” to insure but it’s still only a minor accident.
In fact, it’s probably WAY more hassle for the SS owner. He gets to argue about how you can’t just slap on some new paint and filler, and neither insurance company is likely to care about “patina” or “provenance.”
Point taken Roger, however, when I had my little bonnet-bender last year I was impressed by two things:
1. My insurance carrier for the Jag (Hagerty) seemed VERY willing to assist me in badgering the insurer for the “other guy” to fix my car properly.
2. The “other guy’s” insurer (Geico) sent an adjuster out to my house, who seemed to take it VERY seriously. He was willing to pay to repaint the entire bonnet (something the damn body shop DIDN’T do… but wouldn’t shock me if they took the money for!) and made it clear that he wouldn’t be happy unless I was.
In the end the only party I wasn’t happy with was the body shop, who made lots of promises and lived up to very few of them. I couldn’t get away from them fast enough… despite all the good kudos for them from the Seattle Jag Club folks. 🙁
Right now I’m researching stuffing a TDI into a 1971 240Z I have lying around. I have an ’04 Jetta, and it scoots better than my (heavily modified) ’72 Plymouth, so I can only imagine what it would do in a car that weighed a full 1/3rd (about 1100 lbs, after motor weight is considered) less… 😀
I’m thinking respectable 0-60, 1/4mile and full lap times aren’t out of the question; along with 50 mpg on the freeway. Actually, now that I mention it, I wonder why I’ve wasted so much time and money on that bloody Plymouth.
Points taken, Chuck.
I have almost given accepting recommendations from people I don’t know intimately and whose name I can drop and have it mean anything. People will all rave about the deal or great work they got, and I walk in and they see dollar signs or do a half-assed job. 😛
interesting comment about insurance Chuck – here (from my experience) if someone runs into me (and they have often – mostly when I’m stopped 🙁 ) then I just deal with my insurance and hassle them to get it right – not sure what they do with the other parties insurance.
but we don’t have compulsory 3rd party insurance here so often people have none … and the insurance companies have had a ‘knock for knock’ agreement between themselves where they cover you anyway whether or not the other party is insured … again not my problem in an accident – seems to work well.
Jerome