Great Britain, England, United Kingdom

Since most SABCC'ers are American, there are occasionally times when a quick geography/history lesson would come in handy. Blogger C.G.P. Grey went to great effort to educate folks such as ourselves in the nuances of such things.

Pay attention - you never know when you might see this on another pub quiz...

Mugs & Motors - Official Mug

Mugs and Motors has become a favorite activity for SABCC. We enjoy gathering at a local coffee shop to exchange stories, catch up on each other's news and spend time in the company of those similarly afflicted. In short, coffee and conversation for motoring enthusiasts.

The club now has an official mug for you to enjoy your morning jolt of caffeine while you show off your loyalties. It's a big 13 ounce ceramic thing of beauty and it is guaranteed to make your coffee taste better. Check it out in the SABCC Swag shop.

I hope to see you at Mugs & Motors on February 19th!  

A 'Fee' or Shakedown?

South Alabama British Car Club's British Car Festival has been a fixture at Fairhope Beach Park since 1999. Every October (or November some years) we made arrangements with the City of Fairhope to use the park for the public event. Note, I said "public", not "private". 

This event has been carried on the city's events calendar on their visitors web site almost since the city had such a presence. Our out of town visitors spend money with the merchants of the city and the event is almost always covered by the local news media. Should be a win for Fairhope - right?

Last year, our club representative for affairs with the city received  a letter stating that ALL requests for use of the park by any entity - non profit or otherwise - will be subject to a use fee for the facility. The only exemption was for schools located in the city. While I personally do not oppose reasonable charges for the use of a lovely facility like this, I believe that the city has gone overboard with this ordinance.

As it stands, the fees that the city wants to extract from the day's proceeds approach $500.00. On a shoestring budgeted event like ours, that is a real impact. Bear in mind that over the years the Festival has been conducted there, SABCC raised nearly $10,000.00 for a diverse group of charities. Early on, the club invited the local fire department and, later, Fairhope High's band to serve lunch at the show to help them in their fundraising efforts.

Fairhope is under financial duress (as are many other cities) to the point that they've instituted a city sales tax - the first in the city's history. However, an event that brings money-spending visitors to the city should not be forced to bear the burden of the results of questionable government actions that brought this beautiful village on the bay to this condition, in my opinion. 

Stay tuned for more developments on this subject.

Watch the Cat Go Back Together

Richard's E-Type Before Disassembly

I don't own a Jaguar E-Type. Well, I do have a half-ownership of a pile parts (some pretty good ones, actually) that used to be a complete E-Type that has since given its soul to other E-Types around the world, but its hasn't been a driver since Bill Clinton was in office. I do have a friend that owns an E-Type that I've written about from time to time here and he's starting the reassembly process of his long term restoration.

Richard Cunningham's 1964 E-Type coupe has it's own web site and now it also has a blog to keep all and sundry interested parties up to speed on the progress of the restoration. He has posted a number of photos there and will be keeping Jaguar lovers around the world up to date on his work. You might even see a photo or two of yours truly doing his best to stay out of the way while real work is being done on the car.

Check out his blog often - the cat could be on the road sooner than you might imagine.  

Jaguar XK8s for Toyota Camry Money - or Less

I'm lusting in my heart

Way back in 1996 Jaguar introduced the replacement for the venerable XJS - the stunning XK8. I can recall the first time I clapped eyes on the new sporty cat at one of my early British Car Festivals at Bellingrath Gardens. Joe Bullard's  Jaguar of the Gulf Coast was a major sponsor of the event and used it to introduce the new Jag to the Mobile area. It pushed all the right buttons for me - except in the ready cash department.

Fast forward a few years and the XK8 is in its second generation and called simply XK. Now toting a window sticker with a total price that can exceed $100,000, I began to look into the value of older XKs - just lookin', not buyin'.

A quick visit to Hemmings Motor News' web site found these loverly cats:

• 1997 XK8 convertible - 48K miles. Garage kept, full Jaguar service history. Dark blue metallic -$12,900.00

• 2000 XK8 convertible - 52K miles. Three owners from new. White with navy top - $13,900.00

• 1997 XK8 coupe - 63K miles. All service records. garage kept. Maroon metallic - $12,500.00

• 2003 XK8 convertible - 66K miles. Full dealer service. Black on black on black - $19,000.00

If you like a little more competition in your life, you can take your chances with Ebay. I recently heard about a locally-owned 2006 XK convertible with less than 25K miles on the clock for an opening bid of less than $19,000.00 - American!

For the same (or less) money that a Japanese beigebox costs, you could be driving an honest-to-goodness grand touring machine.

What British Marque is Named After a River in Ohio?

Yeah, that's a tough one but if you hate a mystery, I'll spell it out for you: Lagonda. Most British car enthusiasts know of the Lagonda marque as part of the Aston Martin concern. Lagonda, however predates Aston Martin by a few years. 

Founded in 1906 by an Ohio-born son of a preacher named Wilbur Gunn as a motorcycle builder in Staines, Middlesex, UK, Lagonda was successful almost right out of the starting gate. Gunn's Lagonda motorcycle won the 1905 London-Edinburgh trial. By 1907, Gunn took the path that many other motorcycle builders were following and launched an automobile in an effort to capitalize on the public's demand. As with his motorcycle, his Lagonda automobile was a racing success, winning the 1910 Moscow-St Petersburg trial. 

At Gunn's death in 1920, the firm was taken over by its senior management team and the offerings were taken upmarket. Technical advances such as twin overhead cams, hemispherical combustion chambers and superchargers were part and parcel to the Lagonda name. Other models utilized bought-in engines (a common practice at the time) from Crossley and Meadows along with license-built pre-selector gearboxes from Maybach.

1938 Lagonda Rapide

Upmarket was not where the company needed to be when the Great Depression hit the world. By 1935, the firm was in the hands of a receiver and bids were solicited for its assets. Competing bids from Rolls-Royce and an investor named Alan Good were considered with Good becoming the owner of Lagonda. 

Once Good took over the firm, he persuaded none other than W O Bentley to leave Rolls-Royce and join the company as a designer and competitions manager. Bentley worked his magic by adding higher-power engine options, torsion bar suspension and hydraulic brakes. The lower slung cars looked the part of high performance motoring. Bentley's crowning achievement was the 4.5 liter, 180 bhp, V12 engine in the 1937 Rapide model.

Once again, financial clouds gathered after World War Two and the firm became the property of David Brown - owner of Aston Martin and the two companies were merged under single management. Lagonda produced gentlemen's sporting transportation after the David Brown acquisition, but the marque later became known as a builder of sporting saloon cars (that's a sedan, cowboy) not unlike the offerings of Jaguar. 

Eventually, Lagonda became a model name for Aston Martin saloon cars with the last one being a very wedge-shaped design from the pen of William Towns. Now, a rather hideous SUV-crossover-station wagon thingy is planned to wear the Lagonda badge in the near future. I've ranted about that in earlier posts here.

By the way, don't look for Lagonda Creek in Ohio - it has been renamed Buck Creek and it runs through Springfield. There are a number of areas there named Lagonda after the original name of the creek which was a native word meaning buck horn or crooked horn.     

Modernized Jensen Interceptors

The Jensen Interceptor was always an object of lust for me. The brute Chrysler V8 heart in the Savile Row suit was the best of America and Great Britain together in one beautiful package. 

A UK based firm, Jensen International Automotive, is producing a thoroughly updated Interceptor using your donor car as a starting point. Called the Jensen Interceptor S, the car is given a complete restoration with some updates to the styling, body shell strengthening, new interior with significant material upgrades and modernization of the suspension system. The Chrysler V8 and automatic gearbox are replaced with a new GM-sourced 6.2 liter LS3 V8 engine with your choice of automatic or 6 speed manual gearbox. The 429 bhp lump will propel the modernized Jensen to claimed top speed of 160 mph. 

All of this gratification doesn't come cheaply: you'll need to place a suitcase containing £105,000 in the glasshouse boot of your donor Interceptor when you ship it to the folks at JIA..

   

Two Homecomings and a Trip Back to High School

Saturday marked a major development in SABCC'er Richard Cunningham's Jaguar E-Type restoration: he brought the painted bodyshell back to the Garagemahal in Daphne. 

Getting the body back from the paint shop in Fairhope was going to take a couple of trips with a trailer since the main body was on a dolly and the expansive bonnet was on a rotisserie fixture that took up a lot of real estate. There wasn't going to be any loading help from the bodyshop so, Mike Darby and I volunteered to help with the effort. Mike would also help give the final paint finish a quick inspection and I would, well, try to stay out of the way.

Mike Darby at the Wheel

I arrived at Richard's just before Mike drove up in his near-as-dammit-finished MGA roadster. Mike offered me a lift to Fairhope in the MG and I couldn't resist. The lovely red car was just striking in the bright sunshine and it would be first time I've ridden in an MGA since 1973. Sign me up!

My best buddy in high school - Tony Barone - had a '62 MGA roadster and we spent a lot of time in that old car. The yellow paint was faded and chalked, it didn't have side curtains and first gear sounded like rocks in a coffee can (a common malady, says Mike). In short, it was perfect! I can remember the view from the shotgun seat very clearly - the center mounted and horn button and the starter knob were just cool. The top was never up unless it was pouring rain and even then, the use of liberated gym towels for side curtains didn't do much to keep us dry.

Riding with Mike brought back a lot of those old memories, but his MGA is light years nicer than the beater I knew. Mike is also a top-down guy and temps in the low 40s (Fahrenheit) didn't mean that the soft top needed erecting. He cranked the heater up to high and set out. I was in heaven.

The Glowing Body Tub

We got the project E-Type back to Richard's home in two trips with the trailer. We handled the beautifully painted body with the awe and caution that the expensive work demanded. Mike and I followed Richard as he towed the body home and there were more than a few double takes and pointed fingers from those in passing cars. The E-Type is a showstopper even in a disassembled state.

The new Opalescent Silver Grey paint is stunning. In the sunlight, the metallic paint simply glows, almost as if it was lit from within. I'm excited about the progress made on the Jaguar and I don't even have a dog in the fight! 

A Justifiably Proud Richard Cunningham

Richard offered to make a side trip over to Mike's shop in Silverhill, Alabama to retrieve my new-to-me hardtop that I purchased for my faithful MGB. It made the trip back from the seller's place in Meridian, Mississippi in Mike's pickup and I haven't had the time to fetch it home. We strapped it down on the trailer and brought it back to my humble garage in Spanish Fort.

As I mentioned, the gel coat has a ding or three and there are a number of scratches that might buff out. It needs new side windows and some of the rubber seals would do with a replacement. There is also a broken tab that engages the clip on the tonneau panel that I need to find or have made. But, for the price, I did very very well. I spent an hour or so this afternoon giving it a thorough clean up and I am starting the search for parts. If you've got factory hardtop parts that you would like to part with at a reasonable price, please get in touch.

Nurburgring Threatened

The future of the storied Nurburgring race course is under threat.

An expensive theme park was constructed on the site of the racetrack, funded primarily by the German government and operated by a private consortium. While the theme park construction raised a few eyebrows, it has been discovered that the park is a financial black hole for German taxpayers. Now the private operators are seeking control of the complete Nurburgring complex in an effort to shift some of the operating revenue from the track to the theme park operation. In fact, a significant increase in fees for tourists to drive the 'Ring as well higher fees for automakers to test cars there have been proposed.

A number of non-racing events have been produced at the track site including music festivals and celebrity concerts. The events have been branded with the "Ring-Kultur" name which has infuriated Nurburgring enthusiasts.

A grassroots effort has been launched in Germany to prevent the historic track from further encroachment. Check out the Save the Nurburgring web site set up to spread the word and keep pressure on German politicians. Sign the on-line petition and tell a friend. 

Pub Quiz - Without the Pub

"Diabolical... impossible... who did this?" And those are the comments that I can use. What elicited this string of commentary? A pub quiz at SABCC's general club meeting.

Since the first one was received so well, Quizmaster Mike Darby will have another one ready for the January 25th meeting (which starts at 7:00PM instead of 7:30 - make note!). 

Should be loads of fun! *heh, heh*

Pininfarina the Latest to Come Under Chinese Ownership?

As more of Europe's once-great marques find themselves under Asian ownership, it should come as no great shock that the storied Italian design house of Pininfarina may be the next to join the club. British car enthusiasts have much to thank Pininfarina for; the MGB GT, the "Farina" series of saloon cars for BMC, various Rolls Royces and the 1978 refresh of the Jaguar XJ6 to name a few.

The MGB GT proved to be quite troublesome for the designers at Abingdon. They always knew that they wanted a coupe version of the roadster but were never able get the look they wanted. In 1964 MG shipped a 'B roadster to Pininfarina to see what they could do to bring a coupe to fruition. The first step taken was to raise the windshield height which kept the finished car from looking as "squashed" as some of the earlier MG efforts appeared. They then added the kickup above the rear window, not unlike the crease on the optional factory hardtop for the roadster, which gave it a more sculpted look.

Pininfarina painted the car a light metallic green and returned it to Abingdon where it was received to near-unanimous praise. With a few very minor tweaks, the car was placed in production for the 1965 model year. As of 1998, the prototype existed in private hands, repainted silver metallic.

A news article about the possible sale to China's BAIC can be found here.
   

A New Wife, A Sports Car and an Old Photo

Last evening, when my long-suffering spouse and I were sifting through some old photos we ran across this one that I shot of her and my brother on a day trip to Dauphin Island, Alabama. We drove down there - three up - in Alan's 1971 MGB roadster. His car was British Racing Green with a tan interior and had a luggage rack on the bootlid. You'll also note the CB antenna on it too, good buddy.

This picture is about the only one of Alan's first MG that exists. Sadly, he didn't get many photos of it and the ones that were taken have been lost over time. This one was shot in the late summer of 1976, just mere months after the lady in the passenger seat married me.

Alan no longer has the car - he sold it many years ago to buy something more 'practical'. I doubt that there is a day that passes that he doesn't regret it. 

There is also of photo of me taken that same day and my hair is just as big as my brother's. How did the Missus keep her 'do looking so good?