AN UNFORGETTABLE YEAR

Or should that be a year to forget? Certainly there’s been no other year like it, which is why the five owners below should be commended for their attempts to get out and make the most of it – in spite of the restrictions faced.

1997 JAGUAR XJ6 3.2 SPORT

I had such plans for the Jaguar XJ6 that I bought back in January. I was going to join my local classic car club. I was going to pop a whole raft of personal cherries – Bicester Heritage, Brooklands and Jaguar Breakfast Club meets at Gaydon. Hell, I was even going to take it to one of the big European historic race meets.

None of that happened, of course, but while I only added 600 miles to the Jag’s odometer in 2020, that’s still 100 more than I ever managed in its MG Midget predecessor during its last few years in my ownership – and no-one had even heard of coronavirus or COVID-19 back then.

I booked a day off work back in February – remember when life was still normal? – and took it on a road-trip to Hunstanton in Norfolk for no other reason than I wanted to put some miles on my new toy and look at the sea. Then I made essential trips to the supermarket slightly more bearable when it all went to pot during Lockdown 1.0 by using it whenever time and weather allowed.

I’ve taken my son – who I think adores it even more than I do – out in it on several for-the-hell-of-it local runs and even used it for a strange, but utterly wonderful summer’s evening out in the middle of nowhere with one of my oldest friends and his Ferrari, sitting – two metres apart, of course – in a field and talking blissful car nonsense until the sun set.

More recently, YNO and I visited Burghley House in Stamford, where six of the CCW Massive convened to remind ourselves what we – and our classics

– look like, and can still remember my reluctance to return to my home office following an all-too brief drive out into the Lincolnshire countryside in it one blisteringly hot lunchtime back in July.

2020 may have sucked like the proverbial Dyson, but I have cautiously high hopes for 2021. I bet the Jag does, too.