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like that he rightly declared the XK as the English equivalent of the small-block Chevy engine to create a frame of historical reference for American car guys.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.

Insightful Comment. Slashdot | Preparing for the Worst in IT

I was reading an article link on Slashdot which was talking about the “threat of outages on major Internet infrastructure” in general, and specifically about the “carrier hotel” in Los Angeles named “One Wilshire”. Every major city in the civilized world has at least one building like this. Here in Seattle it is “The Westin Building” (Ironically NOT the Westin Hotel buildings, but the old headquarters building for the hotel chain when it was located here in Seattle, before it shuffled off to New York after a string of M&A action. The Westin is a Carrier Hotel, not an actual hotel.)

Of all the threats that I can list in ACTUAL LIKELIHOOD that put a carrier hotel at risk, “terrorist attack” is not even in the top ten. (“Human Error” is always going to be Numero Uno. Nothing borks up things faster than error-prone human beings!) But for some dumb reason, everyone gets completely fixated on the possibility of a “terror attack on the Internet” in the form of a concentrated effort to “take out” a carrier hotel.

This is completely ludicrous. I will explore this lunacy in a future post (in my newly created “datacenter” category), but I wanted to point out a remarkably insightful comment I read on the /. link. It so well summarizes both the fearmongering I’ve grown REALLY tired of, and expresses the fundamental reality of American Life right now… meaning, “we’re over the shock of the event itself, and we’re tired of it being used to justify lunacy.” Read on…

Slashdot | Preparing for the Worst in IT
Sixteen days after 9/11 my daughter was born, it scared the shit out of me. I wondered if I would be drafted for war, I wondered if she would, one day go to war, I wondered if one day she would have to prepare for terrorist attacks in school, I wondered if she would be snuffed out two weeks into life by some nasty man made virus, I wondered if the virus had already been released and we just didn’t know it yet, I thought a lot about my daughter’s future and how I would raise her to deal with it. I was thoroughly terrified of the future.
Looking back on all of that I realize that Americans did more to terrify ourselves than the enemy ever could have. We’ve lost thousands of soldiers and spent billions of dollars in this war on terror and we are only more terrified, it doesn’t make us safer, it doesn’t keep the power on, we’re not flying safer, our water, internet, phones, roads, schools, our children are not safer, and hell we don’t even feel safer. It’s all at risk now, because we’ve spent all of our money and time trying to lock things down, keep things safe and protect ourselves from the boogeymen.
Today, my daughter is five, she can read, tie her shoes, and does well with math. She doesn’t know what a terrorist is and they don’t talk about that in school. Her little brother is also doing great, neither has gone hungry or lonely or cold a day in their lives and we still haven’t finished our Y2K rations. They know only one thing about politics and it’s that George W. Bush is a dumb ass. They also know what consumerism is and the ways that the TV can affect them.
I’m sick of hearing about terrorists and terrorism. I’m not scared of a terrorist attack and in fact, I’d rather be scared than watch another one of our civil liberties gobbled up by the administration or watch another funeral on the news. I’m so fucking sick of hearing about this “post 9/11” bullshit, that I could scream. We weren’t safe “pre 9/11” and there isn’t a fucking thing we can do to become safe in a post 9/11 world. Get over it. Life is fragile and raising your children in a bubble will not make them safer. In fact, once they inevitably leave that bubble they will not be able to survive the harsh reality that is “fresh air”. So thanks George W. for a nation that cannot move without asking themselves WWTTD? (What Would The Terrorists Do?)

Well said. It is a good starting point and frame of reference for my “why terrorists won’t attack the Internet” rant… coming soon.

Zagato at it again: Maserati GS Zagato – Autoblog

Zagato at it again: Maserati GS Zagato – Autoblog

There is a term in the Design world called “Zeitgeist”, which is a German word roughly translated as “Spirit of the Time”. I saw the photograph of the custom Zagato-bodied Maserati on Autoblog and I first thought it was a new Jaguar XK, or maybe an Aston-Martin. Both of the latter were designed by Ian McCallum, not Zagato.

Then I remembered Zeitgeist.

Think back to the any era in automobiles and there are thematic elements that strongly identify the cars from that era. Spats, Fins, Curves, Wedges. There, I just defined the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s for you. 😉

Picasso said it so well, “Bad artists copy, and good artists steal.” Artists and Designers have been copying and stealing from each other since the dawn of time, so the ‘alikeness’ of some things is to be expected. Only rarely do objects appear that are BOTH revolutionary in appearance AND immediately appreciated. Usually when confronted with the revolutionary we reflexively reject it, as it is TOO different. This is true of all avenues of human expression, art, music, cars, movies, fashion, etc.

Think about that old Jaguar I have in the barn. It appeared in 1961 and literally caused a sensation. There was a lot about it that seemed “revolutionary” at the time, but in reality it was just an evolutionary step that was logical in nature. Disc brakes everywhere, independent rear suspension, “supercar” performance at a reasonable price… and of course the styling… all had been previewed before in bits, just never rolled into a mass-produced package. You can see the influence of the very successful D-type Jaguar race cars in the lines of the E-type. It was just smoothed out into something less pugnacious and more elegant. The result was stunning.

You can see its influence (or as Picasso would say, its felonious reappearance) across a broad spectrum of machines that all appeared within two years of the E-type’s debut in Geneva. They span the range from the Ferrari 250 GTO, to the Chevrolet Corvette. You could even say it became such an iconic shape as to have echoes a decade later, with such machines as the Datsun 240Z.

So I expect that the comment whiners all over the Web will complain about the sameness of this design (which by the way the SECOND time I looked at it seem to me to have paternal lineage in the Aston/Jag camp, and maternal links to the new Alfa Romeo 8C) but not realize that this was a one-off, for a customer, who shelled out big bucks, er… Euros, for it. As such it was built to meet HIS needs, not yours. People don’t buy revolutions, they buy comfort.

Does it remind me of other cars? Of course! Does that bother me? Nope.