Category: Weird Seen

I carry a camera all the time, and whenever I see a weird car, I shoot it.

Jay Leno’s Garage, Jaguar XK 120

(Giving a long-distance “Good bye” to my dad’s Jaguar XK 120 today… the eBay deal is wrapping up as we speak, so here is a good XK 120 link:)

Jay Leno’s Garage, Jaguar XK 120

Have a look at Jay Leno’s website about cars. Especially the two Jaguar videos about the XK 120, with Jay talking and driving the Jag, and Bernard Juchli, Leno’s Mechanic, talking about the Jaguar’s mechanical aspects.

Some observations:

Jay & I think alike about one thing, the wonderful sound of the XK engine! “The car has a radio, but why listen to it when you can listen to that?” I agree. Sir William’s Sixth Symphony is such a joy to the ear of any car guy. You cannot really capture it with recording equipment. It must be experienced first hand. Sure there is the baritone rumble of the exhaust, but what you can’t hear except in the physical presence of the machine are the more subtle sections of the orchestra: The rustling of the cams. The XK’s chain-driven, flat-tappet, twin-cam head makes a wonderful synchronous rattle that adds a sort of woodwind to the thunderous exhaust note. Speaking of wind, there is also a distinct whistle to the air intake system. I can even here my alternator now and then. It all adds up to a very pleasing experience to the ear of the driver. To me that “road music” is a fundamental part of the vintage Jaguar sports car experience. I love it that (mostly) Jay just shuts up and lets that sound through. 😉 Not that I don’t enjoy hearing him talk now and then… especially about cars, but in this instance, the sound is more important than his words.

I also like that he rightly declared the XK as the English equivalent of the small-block Chevy engine to create a frame of historical reference for American car guys. It was a truly remarkable machine that powered an amazing range of vehicles through SIX DECADES of production. Starting in the 40s and finishing in the 90s, it powered race cars, limousines, sports cars, luxo-barges, sedans, saloons… even Armored Personnel Carriers and Tanks! A legendary engine, with very little known about it here in the US, despite the hundreds of thousands of them sold here. I’m always amazed at the wonder people express when I open the bonnet at a car show, or where ever… It is so unlike the squat V-config archetype of “engine” that most car guys have in their heads.

It is fitting today to find this link. My Dad’s old XK 120 will be on its way to Denmark soon, heading to its new home and caretaker. It will be missed.

WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER

Wil Wheaton’s Geek in Review: WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, Part I
Wil Wheaton’s Geek in Review: WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, Part II

Ok, so I have this William Shatner story that I have to tell. If anyone knows Mr. Wheaton (or even has a TypeKey account so they can comment on his blog) and can pass along the URL, maybe he’ll get a chuckle out of it.

The scene is New York City, in the autumn of 1988. I had recently married Sue (9/9/88…. guess who picked that hard-to-forget date?), and my parents lived in NYC at the time. My dad was transferred there for work on a two year assignment and they decided to “live like tourists” for those two years and experience NYC to the fullest. Sue & I flew out from Seattle and stayed with them for about 4 or 5 days. Mom & Dad had met Sue just once, very briefly before we for all practical purposes, eloped, so this was a more formal “get to know Chuck’s new wife” visit. We too were swept up in the “Goolsbee’s Do Manhattan” theme. Sue had never been in NYC, so she was awestruck by it all. The whole time she was playing up her whole country girl persona and asking when we would see a celebrity. None were to be found. My parents took us and my little sister (who was in high school at the time) to a Broadway play. “Phantom Of The Opera” (I found it to be rather lame and overdone… but I guess all my years of art school ruined me for appreciating simple melodrama.)

So Sue & I were sitting in our seats, waiting for the show to start. My parents and sister were sitting in the row in front of us, a little to our left. Our seats were perfect (too bad the play sucked) right in the middle of this huge slice of parabola that was this very nice theater. Sue is chatting with my sister diagonally in front of her as I’m just sort of scanning around at the architecture. My eye catches sight of … you guessed it “WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER” edging down our direction from the right side of the theater, but two rows below. I nudge my wonderful wife and whisper, “You wanted to see a celebrity? Well here comes William Shatner.” I see my little sister’s eyes light up, and Sue says ‘Who is that?” I answer: “You know… Captain Kirk.”

What followed was one of those exquisite moments in time. Where physics seems to become irrelevant and time suspends and elongates. Here we were in a huge, crowded, acoustically perfect space. There were hundreds, if not over a thousand people all around us, every one of them murmmering their little conversations while they passed the time awaiting the rest of the crowd and the dimming of the lights. Sue, finally getting her wish, was basking in the presence of celebrity… even if she really wasn’t sure the stature of the celebrity she was in close proximity to. WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER (thanks Wil!) was accompanied by a woman, who was shuffling along the row of seats in front of him. Just as the two of them passed directly in front of me, time and space distorted even further and at that very moment came one of those silent pauses in a crowd where all noise ceases. It was as if every person in the entire theatre had just completed their sentence, hitting the terminal punctuation mark with a pause for breath, in a perfectly synchronous, simultaneous fashion. That silent pause was just long enough for all echoes to settle and be absorbed. At that very moment you could have heard a pin drop.

Except no pin dropped.

Instead my wife opened her mouth and uttered in her rarely used, but distinct Oregonian Hick tone:

“He’s SO fat!!”

Those three words filled the acoustically perfect, and perfectly silent-for-a-fraction-of-a-second-before-and-after, gigantic space of the theater. The words blurted out and orbited the space. They travelled at the speed of sound and reflected off every surface of that theater and were absorbed by every human being there. Eardrums wiggled and three tiny bones did their little jitterbug dance to the tune of my wife’s flat Oregonian-by-way-of Alaska accent. I felt like a black hole had just opened in the seat next to me and the universe did a huge optical zooming effect towards us. I gasped “Sue!” an instinctively shrank a few sizes in an attempt to blend in with the velour pattern of my padded seat. It was one of those moments that could have provoked an interstellar war lasting generations. Thankfully before a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers unleashed electric death, the vast murmur of the crowd returned.

WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER never even blinked. But the sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruiser female companion of his rotated her weapon turret towards my wife and flashed her twin phaser banks while narrowing the firing slits in a very threatening manner.

If looks could kill, I would have been widowed before my first anniversary.

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…