Jag not so good at Goodwood
John’s XJ6 lets him down on its first big trip to last year’s Revival
1972 JAGUAR XJ6 SERIES 1 4.2
It’ll soon be time to liberate the Jaguar now that spring is just around the corner. However, it’s the circumstances prior to its hibernation that I’m recapping here, as the XJ6 enjoyed its first long journey to last year’s Goodwood Revival.
The trip down there was superb, but when I set off for home I got about 200 yards across the muddy car park before the engine cut out. The first thing you do in this situation is open the bonnet, thinking that maybe a lead has come off the coil, or something.
Head torch on, I struggled to open the vast bonnet in the howling gale – at which point, the whole sound deadening pad ripped away. I set off in hot pursuit, but in true Benny Hill style never quite managed to recapture it.
That whole nonsense took 45 minutes or more, so I turned back to the car, confident that I’d find a loose wire, given that it had stopped so suddenly. Finding nothing obvious, I tried to restart it and the ignition key spun uselessly in the barrel. I’d found my issue, so I phoned the RAC. The news was not good – every trailer and low-loader within 200 miles of Goodwood was being used to retrieve broken down classics!
By this time it was around 9.30pm and I was told that they’d get someone to me as soon as they could. I started to take the dashboard apart in an attempt get to the ignition barrel. The RAC finally arrived – in the shape of local contractor, Paul Pledger – just before midnight. Using a combination of brute force and cable ties, he managed to get an ignition feed and eventually a turn of the starter motor. Paul is young – probably only in his mid-twenties – but he loves classics and was very much committed to getting the car running because he’d been told no low-loaders would be available until the following afternoon. I finally left the Goodwood car park at around 3.40am.
It’s not often I introduce a new car with a story about it breaking down, but I absolutely love this car, despite the fact that my first big trip away in it didn’t go quite to plan. So much so that I jetwashed all the mud away before putting it away.
Hopefully I can then turn my attention to the gearbox mounts and the various other little jobs, including gluing on a new sound deadening pad – the one I chased around the car park was completely wrecked and may as well have just been completely
abandoned...