Category: Cars

I am a “car guy”… I love old cars.

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.

Missing Christopher

As much as NOT having an incredibly tall, usually grumpy teenager around the house should be refreshing, I find myself really missing Christopher. I was wandering around the house after dinner and stopped in front of a bookcase, looking at a shelf full of his collection of history books. I saw his two books by British historian Antony Beevor and recalled discussing them with him on a similar evening after dinner. I picked one up to read. Maybe it will keep my mind of his absence.

I received the flyer for the local MG car club’s “Tulip Rallye” in April. Chris & I have done this run every year since 2004. I’ll have to find a new navigator for this year’s event. 🙁

Above is Chris biding his time on a Tulip Rallye segment with minimal navigation somewhere on Whidbey Island a few years back.

Reflections …on a Bonnet.

The end of Day Two of the Colorado Grand back in 2005, saw all the cars collected in one spot behind a hotel. I wandered around that parking lot and shot probably 200 photographs. It was in a lot of ways, overstimulating. I look at my pictures now and think… “I should have shot that car a different way” or whatever. In reality I had maybe 30 minutes of good light, and 3 hours worth of subject matter to capture! A few gems were uncovered however, this being one of them.

It is a race-prepped and British Racing Green Jaguar XK-120, with a louvered bonnet. I have a few photos of it, from several different angles. I love how this one is abstracted to the point of near cubism… with the peek of car-porn through the louvers, the refelected sky and building, the dust-drops on the paint, and of course Sir William’s curvaceous panels… all at different depths and layers. It all adds up to a nice image.