Recalling his brushes with Jaguar cars and the happy memories they bring.
Mulling over suitable themes for this column, I decided it was of paramount importance to avoid any mention of Brexit, Donald Trump or pandemics. Oops... looks like I failed the resolution test after just 35 words, but it’s hard not to be swamped by all the sadness and gloom. So, in search of more cheery alternatives, I cleverly managed to trip over the power lead attached to my stone age computer. Entirely my fault for hoarding a pile of cables in what looks like a plastic snake pit, of course, but it didn’t help my mood. However, every cloud has a cliché, and surprisingly, the old Dell laptop still worked perfectly. It's just a pity the same couldn’t be said of my ankle.
Naturally I couldn’t resist opening a few stories on a machine that has seen little use for a decade. Delving through the directories, I noticed that about half the stories and photos therein feature one particular famous British marque. Given the title to this story, there will be no prizes for guessing that we’re talking Jaguars here.
Postwar Coventry cats were made in relatively small quantities, but they have a far better survival rate than many others, such as Dagenham you-know-whats, for instance, and/or BL’s 1960s rustbuckets. And when was the last time you saw a Cortina or Hillman Imp moving under its own steam (apologies for unfortunate choice of words)? Even the redoubtable Moggie Minor is fading from the everyday street scene, along with the MGB and Herald family. But Jaguars, particularly XKs and the big pre-MkX saloons, are rugged beasts, largely because they’re built on chassis that would have delighted Isambard King Brunel. My grandad was also a great admirer (of Browns Lane cars, not gigantic 19th Century steam ships), and in the 1950s and early ‘60s he ran a MkV, XK120 and a MkVII, the latter being useful if a kitchen sink or my grandma and her pet poodle needed transporting. They were vast (yes, the cars, not my grannie or her pet pooch). Conversely, XK120s were cramped in the cockpit, hence Jaguar’s decision to move the bulkhead and engine on later models. That’s another story, perhaps to be re-discovered one day on my other old computer.
I only have blurred memories of any of the family Jags from that era, but the MkVII was almost certainly the second car I rode in, the first being my dad’s Minor Tourer on the way back from Poole maternity hospital. When my grandad departed, my uncle became Jaguar custodian, but it seems that the 120 was the only one he kept for long. Certainly long enough to lose control on a wet day and go pirouetting down a motorway slip road. All solid objects missed, luckily.
After vanishing in the 1970s, some 15 years later the 120 was spotted in a national newspaper after a complete restoration. It also appeared in various glossy classic books, looking wonderful. I think my uncle arranged to meet up with the owner, who lived quite close to the old girl’s original haunt in Leamington. Fast forward then to 2004, and I had dropped in at the premises of XK specialist, Jeremy Wade, actually to write a feature on a Reliant Scimitar that had been taken in part exchange. Although my eyes were on the Scim, I couldn’t help noticing the black XK120 parked nearby... No, it can’t be? Oh yes it can, as the registration number confirmed. The family cat was back!
At the time XKs sold for around £30,000 and it would have been great if one of the Ker clan could have chopped a few branches off the money tree and bought it. Sadly, money only grows selectively on trees in politics, and the car went to a customer in East Anglia, apparently to be fully restored in a new green livery. Not sure why, as tan and black looks great to me. Whatever the colour scheme, the good news for all XK owners is that prices have soared. £30k in 2004 translates to somewhere over £75k in 2020.
If there had been a miracle and a pile of wonga had arrived in brown envelopes, the XK would have been the second Jaguar I’d owned. The first was a 240, subtly modified so that no-one could tell what it was without sighing loudly and saying: ‘It’s a shame...’ before spending half an hour reeling off all its faults. I may have been a clueless teenager, but I did understand why it only cost me three hundred quid (about £3000 in today’s money) – it featured detachable rear suspension bolted to rust, and thanks to water leaks galore the interior was full of fungus so the ambience was more garden centre fertiliser department than cigars and brandy. Nevertheless, madness almost struck when two friends suggested a trip to Silverstone one Sunday, not long before the car arrived. Thankfully the planned 200 mile tour was soon aborted. If not there would probably still be a Jag Mk2 rear suspension resting in a Warwickshire hedge.
However, one of my favourite Jaguar memories involves a jaunt to the original SS factory in Blackpool, followed by a blast down the M6 to the almost demolished Browns Lane plant, all in a very early E-Type. That was in 2007, but more recently I had an even bigger treat, meeting Jaguar's former chief test driver, the late Norman Dewis. Now what a memory that created!