ONE OF THE BEST!

[jith]

In response to Los Angeles remarks in his answer to my MK 1 post, I thought you would all like to see this: I found it by accident on e-bay, and it has to be the best I've seen, possibly ever!
It's for sale at 55K if anyone's interested or rich enough!













Wonderful!!

[jith]

lowdrag said:

Such an overworked word concours. I've looked at the photos on Ebay and yes, in the sense that concours is "nice and shiny" it is that, but start looking as a concours judge and this car need quite a lot of money spent to get it anywhere near concours. Water bottle, jack, new tyres (radials weren't around and incidentally I wouldn't like to manoeuvre the car for parking on radials!) tool kit (damned hard to find the correct bits now) new exhaust (stainless isn't original), batteries, radiator and fan, plug caps (should be big ones) and I could go on, but yes, I agree that it looks a very nice car and if the engine was rebuilt by Rob Beere it will be great. My worry is that it is years since the car was rebuilt and it has never been driven over about 30mph nor any distance (you'd know because the enamel would have come off of the manifolds)so it might need some sympathetic recommisssioning too. One nice touch is the correct radiator hose with bellows though.

Don't get me wrong, it looks a great car but for me too much a chocolate box - it can't really be used without it losing a shed load of money. If I want to be really picky as a concours judge, where did he get the 1950 air to pump up the tyres? Sadly concours has gone so far beyond the difinition of "as it left the factory" that we really do have to nit pick to differentiate sometimes.

This is where you and I would probably fall out.
Cars, all of them, are forms of transport and as such were made to be driven.
Concours judges, and I used to be one of them, belong in a museum; a museum of cars no doubt, but a museum just the same.
I am an engineer, and when I designed anything that functioned it was not with the intention of it being in a museum or under the scrutiny of a pedantic enthusiast who in reality cared little for the integrity of the design, but more for the simple fact that it was perfectly original; a desperately flawed principle in engineering terms, as it leaves no room for modification and hence improvement.
This car is desperately beautiful: the exhaust will be of a far superior material and design to the original which was, quite frankly awful.
The radial tyres will utterly transform the handling of this car, particularly if it is to be driven on today's roads and in today's traffic: where on earth did you get the notion that they would increase the steering effort? The rolling friction of a radial tyre is much less than a crossply and actually decreases the steering effort at slow speeds.
I will blow my own trumpet a bit and say that like Rob Beere if I had built the engine it would be a damned site better thatn the original too!!
Concours judges?? I would sentence them all to a year in my workshop in a pair of overalls and five, twelve hour shifts a week. They could then really claim they knew about cars!!

[jith]

lowdrag said:

But here we don't fall out at all! I drive my cars, I love patina, I love to see cars used, but when you use the word concours everything changes. Do you remember the wonderful moment when the Aston Martin Owners Club had to choose between two cars which finished in the concours final? They chose the car where the owner had cleaned the INSIDE of the exhaust because there as nothing else between the cars. I don't criticise the XK120 you show here - I find according to all I read on Ebay that it is wonderful - but as a concours judge the question arrives as to whether the hood is of the correct material with the correct marking, the correct type of material, and so on. I don't like concours, but I have been asked to judge them purely because of my knowledge of Jaguars. For me, I prefer to judge cars that are original, not pastiches of their original entity, but I'm sorry, when you mention the word concours in todays sense it rings alarm bells. Not one car that wins today is "original". Do you remember when it transpired that the cars at Pebble Beach weren't road legal? The suspension nuts were hand tightened so they didn't crack the paintwork. So we, in this sense, arrive at a car which is "concours" but is illegal to drive. I've been to Laguna Seca but the worst I've seen is at the Barrett Jackson auctions in Phoenix where they put mirrors under their cars and even the differential is chromed! To finish, I find that perhaps - and I say perhaps without seeing the car - this car is worth the money, but in terms of "concours" it surely isn't. It is a long way from that as far as a Jaguar judge is concerned given the current state of the concours market.

Sorry ld, I didn't actually mean we would fall out; it's just that the whole concour thing raises my hackles just because of the experience I've had.
Of course I tend to utterly ignore anything a dealer says and make my decision on a car based on what I see.
I just love the look of that car and in particular the colour scheme, it is one of my favourites.
The final straw for me with judging was at Doune one year many moons ago and four of us were viewing the MK2s and Es.
I guy from London, and I won't mention his name because it would be rude, had trailered his 3.8 roadster all the way up and had it sitting in line in the field.
It looked utterly pristine, but as I examined the engine I noticed vertical marks on the exhaust side of the block and pointed out he had a leak that incredibly enough was the head gasket!!
I asked him to fire it up and he said he couldn't because it was blowing steam out oif the exhaust and that was why he had transported it up.
The other three overruled me and gave him first prize; I couldn't believe it!!!
That was my last judging, just stupid nonsense that I refuse to get involved in!
I just love to work on and drive the things, that is the real fun!
It is a pity they are so expensive now, particularly the XKs.