Remember when one of your best buddies started dating the best looking babe in town? You and everyone you knew were dying of jealousy. She had a body to kill for and looks that made normally intelligent men act like neaderthals whenever she walked into a room. Later of course your buddy confided in you that all was not well... in reality she was what most men fear the most: the psycho girlfriend from hell. "High Maintenance" is one term that comes to mind. She may have looked good on your arm and been great in bed, but the rest of the package was just *not* worth financial and emotional costs. You don't need details here since I'm sure if you are a man you know what I mean. Your jealousy turned to fear, and eventually pity.
So it has always been with British Sports Cars like the Jaguar E-Type. They are drop-dead gorgeous objects of lust and desire, are a ton of fun to drive. BUT. There was always that "BUT"... they overheat, they leak oil, they never meet a mechanic they don't like, and of course, the scariest two words in the english language: "Lucas Electrics." Mention or show the E-Type to any red blooded American* male and the stream of thoughts that travel though his mind in a split second go like this: "Hmmmm, beautiful car, curvy lines, powerful engine, babe magnet, cool british car, british car, uhhh, overheating british car, little puddles of british car fluids EVERYWHERE IT GOES, BRITISH (AHHH!)CAR = LUCAS (PANIC! PANIC!) ELECTRICS!!! At this moment the classic primordial fight-or-flight reaction manifests itself quickly as either Fight (Sneer, Buy a Porsche) or Flight (Panic, Buy an American Muscle Car). The truly deranged of course buy something Italian, but that is another subject entirely. So the British sports car has become one of those "don't go there" things for the American car guy.
Well, with a little patience and persistence, these issues cam be worked around. Put a larger radiator in, and back it up with a fan that can move more air (it sucks more!) The little drips of oil? Well if a British Car *stopped* dripping oil then something would be seriously *wrong* now wouldn't it? Put a pan on the garage floor.
My father has always been a "car guy" as long as I can remember.
His true love was always Porsche, but his weakness (and his wallet)
always fell to "lesser" machines. When he met my mom it was an MG
A. I recall a string of cars from my childhood: a 65 mustang,
a 69 MG B, and then the science project that became a beautifully
restored 1950 MG TD. For some odd reason (?) as I and my older
sister approached driving age the stream ran dry and I cut my
road teeth on such thrilling machines as a 77 Buick LeSabre and
a 80 Volkswagen Rabbit Diesel (the latter altering my driving
DNA forever.) After I went off to college the fountain again sprung
to life with a mid 80s Corvette and then finally Dad got his Porsche.
I know that he really wanted to spent his retirement skiing in
Colorado and driving in vintage rallies so I assume at some point
he started searching for an appropriate machine. I think he was,
in all places, France when he saw an ad in a car magazine about
a Jaguar restoration place in Texas. I bet what caught his eye,
after that stunning
E-Type silhouette was the location in Lockhart, Texas near where
he attended High School. I don't know how his first meetings with
them went but I bet they were interesting. They found a fairly
beaten up (or beaten to death from the looks of the pictures)
65 E-Type in California, and over a couple of years of hard work
and then shake-down cruising, built it into the beauty it is.
I'm not much of a mechanic (I owned a 73 VW Beetle for 12 years
which is like living in a mechanical kindergarten. I can adjust
pushrod driven valves in my sleep, but that is about it) so I
can't really fill you in on all the details, but this car is more
fun than should be allowed. It is an awesome road car.
UPDATE: Winter 1999:
The Cannonball Classic proved to be the ultimate shakedown cruise.
As if to deliberately prove me wrong the Borg-Warner tranny blew
a seal and died a groaning miserable death. We also had some clutch
hydraulics problems. The run also managed to rattle loose quite
a few bolts. Of course, true to form, the last piece of Lucas
Electrics (the alternator) keeled over dead 116 miles from the
finish... stranding us in the Mojave desert. Despite all this
the worst was yet to come. The shipper hired to transport the
Jag back to Texas managed to crank down so hard on the tie-down
chains that the Jag suffered a bent frame. Thankfully the guys
at Classic Jag witnessed the unloading. Much arguing and finger
pointing ensued between the shipper, his contractor and the various
insurance agencies. Grrr. After the dust settled the shop started
putting the cat back together again...
taking the time to do some more upgrades along the way, while
also fine-tuning it a bit more. Some electrical work has been
done (no surprise there) and we'll be test-driving a new 4-speed
Jag tranny on the NE2000.
UPDATE: 2002:
In mid-2000 the E-type was unfortunately trapped in an underground
parking garage when a tropical storm flooded Houston, Texas. My parents
were out of state at the time, unaware of the disaster unfolding.
To make a long story short the car was destroyed, insurance paid
the "agreed value" of the car, the original restoration shop agreed
to fix it for one price, but as restorations often do, the price
continued to rise as work progressed...
This caused a lot of, shall we say distress in the Goolsbee household.
As I hung up the phone with my father, who had called to deliver the
bad news that he was selling the car to cut short his losses, my wife
uttered the fateful words "You should buy it from him."
...after I picked myself up off the floor, I started striking while
irons were white hot. Calls were made, deals struck, timetables agreed
to... so in about September of 2002 I became the owner of this car.
In the summer of 2003,
I'll take possession...
*Of course this doesn't happen to you if you are British because the British have a finely tuned sense of denial that they are born with, and in fact can not rid themselves of until they leave Britain... must be something in all that tea they drink. Besides the British are not comfortable unless they are truly miserable anyway which is probably why their cars (and trains, and roads, and houses, and...) are the way they are.