Category: Cars

I am a “car guy”… I love old cars.

A Sunday Drive.

Sorry about the fuzzy phone-cam shot… like an idiot I left my “real” camera in the barn when we drove out!)

My friend Dan O’Donnell is in town this week on business. I’ve “known” Dan for a dozen years… since 1995. To but a more dramatic scale on it, since he was 38 and I was 31! Oddly enough, though the bizarre nature of “Internet Friendship” we never met face to face until just a few years ago. Funny how that works. We do have a lot in common and know a lot about each other as a result. I almost bought a vintage car from him in the late 90s (a 911sc targa), and later, when he was trapped in a job-from-hell scenario, I made an introduction (I think we’re supposed to call that “social networking” now) that resulted in Dan landing a dream job. I love it when that happens. Since that day, he’s promised me a dinner as a “thank you” for that intro, and he finally settled that debt this weekend.

Dan celebrated his 50th birthday this past Saturday and I was privileged to have him spend it with me & Sue, at our favorite local restaurant in Arlington. It was an odd accident of schedule that our long-delayed dinner fell on his birthday, so it was odd to have him buying dinner. In exchange I gladly nabbed a wonderful Pinot Noir from the Captain’s List. I know Sue thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, so a fine time was had by all.

The weather I’m sure was a shock to his Southern California system, as he arrived at Sea-Tac on some pre-dawn flight from LAX into drizzle and low clouds… topped off by the melting remains of an eight inch snowfall up at our house up in the Cascade foothills. In preparation I had a fire going in the fireplace and despite what I recognized as a rapid warming trend (the snow disappeared in a matter of hours), he was obviously appreciative of the extra warmth afforded by the fire. In fact, when it died off he sheepishly asked if I’d stoke it up. We enjoyed an afternoon of just chatting. Dan’s had a rough time of late as his father recently passed away, quite suddenly. We talked a lot about fathers, sons, and family relationships… and he had the opportunity to witness it all as I fielded calls from both my father and Christopher, who made an unexpected call from Chile Saturday afternoon.

When we returned from dinner, the stars were out and I made a bold prediction that we’d have a sunny Sunday. Sunny enough to take the E-type out for a drive. Well, I was wrong and we awoke to high overcast. Undaunted, we took the Jag out anyway. The roads were dry, but it was quite … “brisk.” I drove the car east on SR 530 to the location of the famous “Miss January” photo, where we got out of the car and admired Whitehorse Mountain. I invited Dan to take the left seat for the trip home and from that moment on, he just had this goofy grin on his face.

Like all genuine “car guys” he treated the machine with respect and tenderness, but could not resist the temptation to play with the loud pedal now and then. Doing that just made him grin even more. I got the distinct impression that he enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too.

Ouch!

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…

Finally!

I’ve been searching for this particular part, manufactured of pure Unobtanium, for well over a year. I’ve scoured eBay for the past year+ looking for one of these, which to the uninitiated is a stock air cleaner cannister for a Series 1 Jaguar E-type. They are available from the usual suppliers but I would have to mortgage my home, or sell of a child to slavery in order to purchase one. I prefer to remain out of debt, and the kids are a bit dear to their mother, so I’d risk a lot by selling one off.

So I turned to eBay. As I noted before some guy seemed to be buying every single one that came up, always outbidding me… even on fairly tired looking ones that would take a lot of effort to restore. I had a eBay search query that would email me whenever one showed up, and I’d dutifully place my bids (via a client’s excellent sniping service BidNip.com) and no matter what, somebody always had a higher proxy bid than me. I finally gave up about two months ago… for one life got too busy, but I was also pretty worn down after losing around seven consecutive auctions. Tired ones or incomplete ones seemed to sell for between $80 and $100. Really good ones sold for between $140 and $200.

The eBay search query was in retrospect redundant, because the guys over at the E-type mailing list on Jag-Lovers.org inevitably informed me when one showed up on eBay. Everyone knows I’ve been looking for one, though I hadn’t informed them that I had given up. So late last night Bruce Cox up in Vancouver emailed me and let me know about this auction.

This air cleaner cannister is decidedly NOT stock as it has been polished to within an inch of its life, but I’m OK with that. At least it won’t require a lot of “freshening up” like the plenum and trumpets I found on eBay seemingly two centuries ago.

Now my next trick is to find a Dyno. I can FINALLY lay to rest the never ending Great Air Filter Horsepower Debate, whereby the stock vs. K&N crowd can all finally STFU. 😉

The Truth About Cars | At some point in the not-so-distant future…

The Truth About Cars | At some point in the not-so-distant future…
“At the moment, car dealers’ profits increase in direct proportion to their ability to screw their customers and bilk the manufacturer.”

Farago does it again… distills the ills of an entire industry into one sentence. This is one of the reasons TTAC is by far my favorite “car” site on the Internet. The editorials and commentary are the most insightful and entertaining reading to be found on the subject. Anywhere.