I gotta tell you, the education system in America turns out some real dim bulbs.
(Original here, hat tip to Reason magazine’s web site, who entitled it “Not the Strongest Possible Argument.”)
Author: chuck goolsbee
“So, what’s it like?â€
A discussion came up on the E-type list/forum of Jag-Lovers.org (I say “list/forum” because you can participate either way. I prefer a mailing list format, but most folks I suspect participate as a web forum. Thankfully the user experience is the same: a great resource for information, camaraderie, and technical support for owners and drivers of E-types.) Anyway, this discussion was started by a guy who bought a “basket case” car and is slowly restoring it, but likely YEARS away from the day when he pulls the choke, turns the key, and punches that starter button. He admitted that he’s never driven an E-type and wanted to know what it was like.
My friend Larry Wade, from southern California responded with an excellent write-up, which he has given me permission to share:
I bought my car out of love without really knowing what the content was. I was really worried because my normal car is a BMW M3 which I love. Would the e-type be a dog in comparison? It is 35 years older. It must be awful! Why am I straining my marriage over an ancient, obsolete dog of a car? Then, on my way home….the head gasket gave out. And then I spent a fortune (for me) getting the engine rebuilt, and the suspension, the IRS, the wheels, the transmission, the brakes, the clutch, the fuel system, the carbs, the steering, the cooling system, and some of the interior. Oh, did I mention the aluminum eaten out everywhere coolant can touch (how I hate the POs).
So what was it like to finally drive the car? Wonderful.
You will find that you can really feel the road. The texture, the camber, everything. You are part of it! After driving the E-type, my M3 feels like a floating luxury car instead of a sports car. The Jag is wonderfully responsive, quick and precise. The suspension was tuned back in the day when all corners were drifted, so the throttle/steering wheel interaction is perfect, beautiful and predictable. The braking is very good as well.
This past weekend Jerry Mouton and I got a chance to measure our cars against 30 or 40 of the best cars built anywhere before 1976. I learned that the Jag is truly a supercar. These guys were uniformly excellent drivers and pushed it to the limit. We ate them alive and at will.
The few cars that could brake and corner with us couldn’t match the grunt. The few cars that had the grunt couldn’t brake and corner. Most of them couldn’t match any part of our cars’ performance. Jaguar’s E-type is a genuine MONSTER! I had not realized how very, very good it is until last weekend.
So I remember how you feel now. I also know how you are going to feel. You are going to love it!
Cheers,
Larry
Well said. This really is a car that was light years ahead of its time. The engineering was beyond the bleeding edge, at least on the parts that mattered, such as the suspension and monocoque/tube frame construction. It is superbly balanced and a joy to drive.
I met Larry via Jag-Lovers. He and his kids stayed at my house during a marathon family road trip around the west a few years back. He arrived with his daughter, and he swapped her for his son via some flights between LA & Seattle, while they stayed for a few days. Here is a photo of Larry and his son Alec, who is the same age as my youngest:
We had a blast, roaring around the area here in our two E-type’s, with our two kids. One of these days I’ll reverse Larry’s journey and make a two-kid road trip to SoCal. I had wanted to do it this past Spring Break but the car was not ready. Maybe later this year or early next.
Shifting Gears in my reading habits…
I finished Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Thanks John W!) last weekend. A truly fascinating read. I grazed through the Goolsbee bookshelves to grab something else and my eyes fell upon something I hadn’t read in years (since it came out in the 80s actually!) … I instinctively grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket as I drove off to work one morning. It is Douglas Adams’ Life, The Universe and Everything.
I only started reading it yesterday, and I’m already halfway through. I LOVE Adams’ writing style. It is wonderfully entertaining to read. I’m inspired by him, truly. I love to write and wish I could write half as well as Douglas Adams. I’d love to be able to somehow channel Adams & Eagan when I write my rally reports and stories. While I’m usually confident in my photography, I know my writing is nowhere near these two greats. I guess I’ll just keep trying.
A thoroughly enjoyable diversion from my usual serious reading.
As a side note, I actually one day found myself standing next to Douglas Adams. I can not really claim to have met him, though we exchanged exactly four words. (mind you that was far more than my other New York/Celebrity encounter – the infamous William Fucking Shatner!) I was at Macworld Expo in New York City in July of 2000. I was scheduled to speak at the MacIT conference later that week (with Ron Marx and John Welch) and my speaker badge afforded an AMAZING seat at the Steve Jobs Keynote. I was in the sixth row. This was the famous G4 Cube/no-button mouse/free mouse Keynote. After the speech concluded most of the attendees stampeded the exits like Wildebeests lurching from a Crocodile to collect their free mouse. However the real geeks clamored to the front of the stage to get photos of the newly announced product. Freebies can wait… there are Cubes to undress with our eyes!
Since I was sitting right up at the front, I ambled up there too. I stood back a bit to have a look at the Cube (a truly elegant machine, I still have one on my desk at work!) and noted a rather tall man at my right elbow wedged between me and my friend Chris Kilbourn. “Quite nice” I said to him nodding at the machine. “mmm Yes” he replied, his eyes still glued in techno-lust at the gleaming Cube. I took a second glance and recognized him as Adams! I shot a photo – and despite look of this shot, it wasn’t as stalkerish as it appears… there were literally hundreds of people in a huge semi-circle, with flashes going off like crazy.
Tragically, within a year, he was dead. 🙁
I introduced my sons to his genius not long after, and this copy I grabbed belongs to my youngest son Nick. Next up will have to be “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish!”…
Car Photo of the Day. Bugging you yet?
Noticing a theme here? The previous CPOTD had a Type 57SC Atlantic, can you name this species of genus Bugatti?
A few bonus points can be earned by identifying the other cars, but there all pretty easy.
Car Photo of the Day: Name that car.
Ok I know I’m bugging you with an easy one, but man… isn’t that beautiful?
Here’s another shot of the Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic
Car Photo of the Day.
The last place you would expect to see a 450sl… doing well on a racetrack. That’s yours truly smiling like the Cheshire Cat (in the car my parents are currently driving across the continent with a gremlin in the electrical system.) I’m smiling because I just turned in the second fastest time of the day on the road course at Gainesville Speedway in Florida at the 2004 Forza Amelia. Dad & I also won that event with a Perfect Zero score.
The modern Ferrari you see in the background later trounced us all and dropped me to third place on the track day. Oh well. The real victory was beating a bunch of better cars (and experienced drivers!) in a slush-box equipped boulevard cruiser! I don’t claim to be a great track driver, I have very little experience “driving in anger”, I just happened to take the right line and be very lucky that day.
We’ll be rallying again soon, which is the reason he’s ferrying the car to Vermont. We’ll be once again trying to win the New England 1000, and event that we have done together four other times over the past eleven years. As always I’ll post nightly updates once the rally begins in late May. Hopefully the demons infesting the Bosch bits will be flushed out by then!
Exhaust Update.
Today was a spectacular Spring day in the Pacific Northwest. Temps in the mid-70s(!), sunshine, and clear blue skies. It was really our first sunny and warm day of 2008. The air was filled with … the symphonic roar of a thousand Briggs & Stratton and two-stroke “weedeater” engines as everyone went out and cut their grass for the first time in 2008.
The Goolsbee’s joined the chorus and added to the roar. I only mowed the area around the barn. Chris & Sue did the rest of the property. I was focussed on barn-related tasks, namely oil processing, a bit of Spring Cleaning, and getting the resonators onto my new exhaust. I did the latter job first, as I wanted the Jaguar out of the barn to do some cleaning in there. It was an epic wrestling match, but I finally managed to get the resonators onto the pipes. Unfortunately they are completely cock-eyed:
If Marty Feldman had exhaust pipes, they’d look just like this.
The cock-eyed nature of the pipe on the left is due to the position of the exhaust components upstream. Jerry Mouton provided me with some guidance on keeping all the upstream attachment points loose until I had the resonators positioned just right… but working in the tight confines here just isn’t conducive to getting these adjustments made. I really need to get the car up on a proper lift that allows full access to the exhaust front-to-back. Unfortunately I don’t have such a lift, or access to one. Hrmmmm.
Yes, that is a chunk of wood wedged between the pipe and the body. That allowed me to take the car for a drive this evening and not damage my paint.
I will say that it was WONDERFUL to get the car out on the road again, especially on such a warm, wonderful evening. It felt like August, not April. The car ran perfectly, and sounded GREAT… so quiet and smooth. In fact it is so quiet now, especially at idle, that I thought the engine had died a couple of times as I waited at lights or stop signs. When I pressed the loud pedal it still had a great tune, just not as raucous and dissonant as before. Now it purrs just like a big cat should.