XKSS

[cahami]

What a great solution to your continued enjoyment of a car that you love to drive. I doff my cap to you sir, keep us posted on the conversion.

[mph]

The article was originally written for Punch magazine I think.

Was the windscreen off a production Ford or did I dream it ?

[lowdrag]

That wasn't a dream, it was a nightmare! No, hand made in alloy and then chromed. I won't tell you how much they cost complete with screen since I don't want to risk you having another mightmare!

Edited by lowdrag on Wednesday 16th November 08:18

[a8hex]

Jagmanv12 said:

Having built a number of D types and XKSS I can see the attraction of the extra creature comforts.

Tony, presumably you have tried an XKSS with the roof up? Rearward visibility is not the best. Also it's a smaller cabin than an E roadster. Also are you having fixed side windows?

I've been in the passenger seat of a Lynx D (not Tony's, but he knows which one, sorry I don't know how to spell her name) and a couple of originals. I seem to recall there is somewhat more space in the Lynx. The first time I had a ride in a D, Chris took me around Goodwood in Stefan's shortly after he bought it. I didn't even have a pair of sun glass let alone goggles. I'm not Norman Dewis' size and trying to curl down under the vestigial windscreen with a race harness on wasn't easy - worth it though .

[Hooli]

lowdrag said:

In answer to the above, there are several reasons for so doing. Some years back I bought a long nose Lynx D with the intention of converting the short nose into an XKSS. The difference between converting and trying to buy a Lynx XKSS is around £75,000, hence the thought at the time. But I for some reason didn't like the long nose very much and loved the short nose too much, so the long nose was sold and I went off on another track and built the "Kettle" C-type.

Then comes the recession; I'd long planned my retirement based on interest rates of 7% and an exchange rate of about 1.40€ to the £. Both went out the window, so the C-type had to be sold and I no longer had the money to buy - even if one could be found - a Lynx XKSS. Cutting the coat to fit the cloth isn't easy, and something has to give. A Lynx XKSS is an extremely rare car, ten being made, and they are even more rarely on the market. Lynx D-types, on the other hand, are comparatively numerous - mine is #44 of the line in 1989.

The only people I would entrust this conversion to are those who originally built my D-type, and that is CKL Developments, whom I've known, loved and trusted for ten years and who are ex-directors of Lynx. I don't go into this lightly, because there is a side of me that feels it is sacrilege, but I am not getting any younger and don't do many track days now, mostly because here in France they mix ancient and modern, and the last time I was overtaken by a GT3 who then braked sharply, him with ceramic six-pot brakes and me with a small boat anchor by comparison. My reactions aren't what they were, and I get more pleassure from a day out or touring than this kind of idiocy. Now I'll be able to have a car that I can use on the track, that I can tour with, and which given the over-300bhp will surprise quite a number of more modern cars at a traffic light grand prix.

So in the end there will be 10% more Lynx XKSS's around, 11 in number, and one less D-type, but then in the day Jaguar converted two D-types to XKSS format for owners and two XKSS's were converted to D-types. I am only making history repeat itself. If I win the lottery this weekend I'll stop the conversion and buy myself a real XKSS and that'll nip the thread in the bud, but it is rather unlikely to happen.

So bear with me and try and understand that I have loved cars and motoring since I was born and grew up in a garage. This isn't something I've undertaken lightly, and it has taken me five long years to agonise and finally make the decision.

That makes total sense to me & if I was every lucky enough to be in your position I'd probably do the same. My comments weren't intended to be negative in anyway, I hope the conversion goes well & gives you a lot of pleasure.

[mph]

lowdrag said:

That wasn't a dream, it was a nightmare! No, hand made in alloy and then chromed. I won't tell you how much they cost complete with screen since I don't want to risk you having another mightmare!

I can only imagine how much the full windscreen assembly costs. I've had similar nightmares on my own car, unfortunately they turned out to be true.

I was meaning the glass itself, I'm sure I've read somewhere that it was from a Ford Consul or similar?

[lowdrag]

Now the furore has died down we'll start with how the car is today and follow the changes through. I suggest you find some photos on the intranet and compare because the differences are numerous but sometimes subtle. There is a lot of work before us.


Thsi was done for fun, but I'll keep it on the fin which I shall hang in the main room here which is 0ver 6 metres high. Will look good over the dining table!








These photos were taken the day before we loaded her on the trailer and delivered her to CKL.

[mph]

Not that it will help you much, but the windscreen glass is from a Ford Consul Mk2.

Knew I'd seen it somewhere.

[lowdrag]

Interesting that. One learns every day. Here are some photos of what will be the finished article, but not in these colours. I've no idea why, but the majority of the Lynx XKSS cars are black/red.





Anbd this will be me at the wheel do remember, if that's me I'm 81 now! living in California, the car had no hood or luggage rack.

[XJ13]

mph said:

Not that it will help you much, but the windscreen glass is from a Ford Consul Mk2.

If its any help Tony, Pilkingtons on the Isle of Sheppey can still supply these windscreens new at a reasonable cost.

Pilkingtons

I have no affiliation with Pilkingtons.

[a8hex]

A few years ago I bought a spare head I'd seen on eBay.
It was a nice day, so I took the XK when I went to collect it, the seller heard the distinctive note and came out and we got chatting about XKs. He'd got two, a XK120FHC which he was rebuilding which had spent its life being raced in the US and had an interesting bonnet & engine bay conversion to allow for triple HD8s. He also had an XK150S Roadster, which was originally been a 3.4S but was returned to Jaguar to be upgraded when the 3.8S was released. This car had originally been owned by the Mr Pilkington.

Tony, somehow I can't see you getting away without the hood.

[The Surveyor]

What a fantastic project.

So you're going to take one of these:-


and turn it into one of these:-



I hope you're going to post up some interim pictures.

Paul

[fourwheelsteer]

That article from Punch via R&T is possibly the best piece of motoring writing I've ever read. I wish I could produce prose like that, then again I think you'd have to try hard to make a review of the XKSS dry and dull (although I'm sure some of the motoring press, naming no names but looking at Auto Express, could do it).

Looking forward to the result of the conversion from D-type to XKSS.

[LordBretSinclair]

Goood luck with project Tony, out of interest have you decided on the colours yet or are you going to stick with those of the "D"?

[lowdrag]

Thanks for the kind regards, but with CKL behind the project I sleep easily at night. I am working on a few oddball ideas (like I came across a Spitfire bomb release switch I am thinking of putting on the tunnel as a starter button) but I think I'll keep you all in suspenders until the caterpillar comes out of its' chrysalis. Suffice to say that there is already at least one rather interesting story (make that incredible) to tell about the bits and pieces acquired, but that story is embargoed for the moment!

Over this winter I shall be posting photos just as I did during the gestation of the C-type, and I hope that at least some of you will follow and enjoy the sequential photos. There'll be, as usual, the ups and the downs, but far less than the last time, and when the car emerges I hope you'll all approve.

[a8hex]

Comparatively this should be much easier than last time. At least this time they know exactly what it is supposed to look and be like, it's not as if they are strangers to Ds, XKSS and Lynxes. Last time they were trying to build something that hadn't been seen outside a photo album for the best part of 60 years.

[v8250]

fourwheelsteer said:

That article from Punch via R&T is possibly the best piece of motoring writing I've ever read. I wish I could produce prose like that, then again I think you'd have to try hard to make a review of the XKSS dry and dull (although I'm sure some of the motoring press, naming no names but looking at Auto Express, could do it). Looking forward to the result of the conversion from D-type to XKSS.

Yes, this is such a stylish write-up. Have similar 'style' of editorial looking at history of Downton Engineering, with Jenks and W.B. [both RIP]. All of these dress the ground floor loo walls, together with one of the funniest obituaries ever written; that of the 4th Earl of Kimberley, taken from The Telegraph in 1982.

Have had some house guests enter the afore mentioned loo with objective of relieving themselves. After reading the good Earl's exploits, they find themselves in desparate need to re-lieve all over again; literally, they've pissed themselves with laughter...it's a great wheeze after too much red wine. Thought I'd share the article...

PART.1

The 4th Earl of Kimberley, who has died aged 78, achieved a measure of fame as the most-married man in the peerage; once known as "the brightest blade in Burke's", he worked his way through five wives in 25 years before settling down contentedly with a former masseuse he had met on a beach in Jamaica.

Johnny Kimberley was a jovial extrovert whose interests included shark fishing, UFOs and winter sports - for much of the 1950s he was a member of Britain's international bobsleigh team.

There was a serious side to him too: he played championship tiddlywinks, bred prize pigs, and as a Liberal spokesman in the Lords advised the electorate to vote Conservative, whereupon David (now Lord) Steel sacked him. Once on the Tory benches, he took a keen interest in defence and foreign policy, although not in social reform. "Queers," he declared, "have been the downfall of all the great empires."

However, it was his frequent trips to the altar, and those shortly thereafter to the divorce courts, that most naturally caught the eye of the public. His first marriage, in 1945, was to Diana, daughter of Sir Piers Legh, Master of the King's Household and a former equerry to Edward VIII; Kimberley had met her on a blind date at the Ritz.

The wedding took place at St George's Chapel, Windsor, and was attended by the Queen, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and King George VI, who proposed the toast to the bride and her groom, then a Guards officer. But Kimberley already knew that he had made a mistake. "I couldn't stop it," he said later, "because the King and Queen were there, and I was in my best uniform."

Several years ago, in racy memoirs which were then unpublished, he wrote that on honeymoon he had more fun chasing mice around the bedroom than his new wife, and within a year the marriage was all but over. I gave the butler a note to give to her saying that it wasn't going to work out, and that since her mother was sailing for America that night why didn't she go too?

That night I found a lovely girl and realised what I'd been missing not having a proper romp. After that, I never stopped."

By now Kimberley was a free-spending, hard-driving member of London's beau monde, taking weekends at Deauville, losing heavily at all-night chemmy sessions with John Aspinall, and bedding as many women as he could.

"Sex, I just couldn't think of anything else," he recalled later. He claimed among his conquests Eartha Kitt and Glynis Johns, and even tipped his hat at Princess Margaret, though she declined the honour. One night, he was caught naked by an irate husband in a hotel cupboard.

His second marriage, in 1949, was to Carmel Dunnett, one of the five daughters of Mickey Maguire, sometime welterweight champion of Australia. Kimberley was introduced to her by her elder sister (a daughter-in-law of Lord Beaverbrook), whose affections he had already enjoyed.

They were married at St Moritz, and in 1951 she presented him with an heir, Lord Wodehouse. "It went quite well for three years," the earl remembered. "Then I found out that she had been knocking off one of my chums. I wasn't all that upset, but it was the fact that one had been made a fool of." They were divorced in 1952. She was later murdered in Spain in 1992 by her third husband, Jeremy Lowndes, who then confessed the crime to Kimberley's son...

[v8250]

PART.II

Number three was Cynthia Westendarp, a Suffolk farmer's wife whom the earl met at Newmarket. After she contracted polio, he invited her to recuperate at Kimberley, his seat near Wymondham, Norfolk, "and she never moved out". They were married in 1953, and divorced in 1961.

Three years before that, he had sold Kimberley, a Queen Anne brick mansion built on land held by his forebears for five centuries - "it was the easiest way to get rid of Cynthia. All I could think about was buying a new Aston Martin".

Next up was Maggie Simons, a 23-year old fashion model and the daughter of a cafe owner. She refused to sleep with him until he proposed marriage, which he did within a week. They were married in 1961 but "we both drank a fair amount and had fearful fights". Kimberley's fourth divorce came through in 1965. He was 39.

His fifth marriage, in 1970, was to Gillian Raw (nee Ireland-Smith), "and that was a disaster from the word go. She was a very successful girlfriend, but it didn't work as a wife". He had met Janey Consett, a soldier's daughter, in the Caribbean some years before, and now decided to "sugar off" with her instead. Once more divorced, he married her in 1982, and happily it proved to be sixth time lucky.

No other peer had ever had so many wives. Ready as he was with explanations as to the failure of his marriages, the simpler truth was that Kimberley was for much of his life a charming but egotistical, idle and rather weak man who craved attention and sought only pleasure. He was also, as he admitted in 1980 in a debate in the Lords, an alcoholic. "Helping to liberate Brussels in 1944 was the beginning of my downfall," he wrote. After capturing an almost inexhaustible supply of Champagne, he kept a crate in his tank, regularly refreshing himself from it with a tin mug. "I spent much of the war tight and when it was over I couldn't stop.“

By the 1970s, it had begun to affect his health, and he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He later became vice-president of the World Council on Alcoholism and a member of the National Council on Alcoholism.

As it was, this did not prevent him in his later years from consuming a bottle of white wine each day, although, as he pointed out, this was an improvement on the years when he counted himself "insane". "After all," he reasoned, "no normal person would try to drive a car up the steps of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.“

John Wodehouse was born on May 12 1924. His father, the 3rd Earl, was a well-known polo player and former MP who had won an MC on the Marne. His kinsman, P G Wodehouse, stood godfather to young Johnny.

Both of Johnny's parents had an eye for the opposite sex. His mother had already been twice married, and Johnny was her third child. He had a rather lonely childhood, spending large parts of his school holidays on his own with his nanny at Kimberley, which had been visited in 1578 by Elizabeth I.

The family traced their line back to an ancestor knighted by Henry I, and took their motto's -"Strike Hard" and "Agincourt" - from those of a forebear who had fought with Henry V. They were prominent in Norfolk affairs from the 16th century, and in 1611 received a baronetcy. In 1797, the Kimberleys were raised to the barony, and in 1866 the 3rd Lord Wodehouse, the Liberal politician and diarist, was created an earl. As Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Kimberley diamond field was named for him.

Johnny was sent to Eton, and first acquired "my taste for feminine flesh" from "an old dear I paid a couple of quid to while up in London". At 17, he inherited the titles when his father was killed in a German air raid. He then went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, but his studies were cut short when, at 19, he got drunk in a nightclub and "accidentally enlisted in the Grenadier Guards". He finished the war as a lieutenant.

In the 1950s, he ran a successful public relations business that had clients such as Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and "that bald bugger" (Yul Brynner); his tea-boy was the future gossip columnist Nigel Dempster. In these years, he acquired a reputation as a rackety motorist, and was frequently fined by the police. He also killed a pedestrian he claimed not to have seen crossing the road in Piccadilly.

After selling Kimberley, the earl moved to Jamaica, where he sold land to wealthy Americans. Later he concentrated on his duties in the Lords, leading a campaign in the late 1970s for repayment of money docked during the war from the pay of POWs to take account of local "camp currency".

From 1976, he was a member of the Lords' All Party Defence Study Group, and from 1992 until the expulsion of the hereditary peers in 1999 was its president. He was also president of the Falmouth Shark Angling Club. Latterly he had lived in Wiltshire.

In 2001, he eventually published a version of his memoirs as The Whim of the Wheel. He died on May 26. Looking back on his life as a ruse, Lord Kimberley admitted: "I'm not very proud of what I've done." He believed that his marriages had taught him "that you have to work very, very hard at them". "If you strive for perfection," he considered, "eventually you'll find it.“

He is survived by his sixth wife and by the four sons of his marriages. He is succeeded in the titles by his eldest son, John Armine, Lord Wodehouse, a computer programmer.

[ItsaTVR]

mph said:

Not that it will help you much, but the windscreen glass is from a Ford Consul Mk2.

Knew I'd seen it somewhere.

Where, mph, have you read this? Not the Internet, I hope I fear the story has been corrupted...
The Consul MK2 front screen is used by all (nearly) classic TVRs in the 60-70's.
Not near curvey enough to be used on an XKSS.

ETA: Looking at the Ford's REAR screen seems a very good possibility...

XJ13's link to the Pinkerton Pilkington site is still valid, and their efforts should be applauded .

I don't know much about Jaguars, or Puccini, but I know what I like

Edited by ItsaTVR on Monday 14th November 22:26

[mph]

Info came from Nigel Thorley via his book on E-types.

Seems feasible to me. Why go to the trouble of making custom screens for a handful of cars ?

Looking at the Consul it may even be from the rear screen.

Edited by mph on Saturday 12th November 10:12