A real chick magnet.
Posted on 10/04/2009 7:29:17 AM PDT by vikk
GEORGE SWEEPER, who has nurtured his 1968 Jaguar E-Type for nearly 40 years, has come up with a new defense of the British brand’s reputation for poor reliability.
“There may have been many bad ones made,” he concedes. “I got one of the good ones.”
Mr. Sweeper recalled a road trip that he and a friend made from New York to California in 1981.
“We drove 58 hours to Oakland,” he said. “We drove and drove and drove. We saw the sun come up. We saw the sun go down. We went to the bathroom at the same stops. We got on highway 80 and stayed on it.”
There were no breakdowns.
A few years earlier, he had spent six weeks zigzagging across the country, covering 10,000 miles. The only thing that broke on the Jaguar was a fan belt, at the Grand Canyon. “But I carried a spare,” he said.
Mr. Sweeper, who lives in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, says his Jaguar is pushing 185,000 miles. He enjoys driving. Briskly and far.
“I have a passion for it; I have an addiction to it,” he said on a recent Saturday afternoon. He was on his way to Lime Rock Park in the northwest corner of Connecticut to cheer on his mechanic, Terry Lippincott, who was racing an E-Type in the vintage event there.
The two met five years ago, when Mr. Sweeper needed a dent repaired; his New Jersey mechanic, Motorcraft Ltd., did not do body work.
“Terry knew I didn’t have a lot of money,” Mr. Sweeper said. “So he said, ‘George, I’ll charge you only what I pay for the parts, and if you want to come down and help me work on your car, I won’t charge you as much for labor.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Many years ago I went out the door to get in my car and go some place. A real cool cat in one of those Jaguars blasted down the street at a high speed, with one hand on the wheel and the other arm draped over the seat in true cool cat style. He disappeared around the bend into the S-curves there. A few minutes later I drove past and saw his Jag firmly planted into a house and him trying to explain how he got there to some irate home owners. I laughed my butt off at the crazy skid mark spirals all the way through the S-curves and across the lawns into the house. Mr. Tweedy Elbow Patches had some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy.
correct..
the name reverted back to the cars PROJECT name which was 240Z while they looked for a new name..
It stuck..
My much older brother owned a 1959 Vauxhall, he was going to sell it to me when I got out of highschool, but his wife’s cousin wrecked it. It was a very good car. My father was a good friend of the sales manager at the local Pontiac dealer who said that Vauxhalls were outselling Pontiacs. Maybe that is why GM stopped importing them.
1968 was when the EPA pollution regs started kicking in. Compression ratios started getting lower because of the requirement to reduce oxides of nitrogen.
As a teen in the 60’s, my friends loved the Corvette Sting Ray. Although the coupe was nice (esp the split window version), The XKE was ALWAYS my #1 favorite. Beautiful clean, simple, elegant lines that I still prefer....esp in women!
and both share the same millstone about their necks .. something British Leyland never got right .. Lucas Electrics. I suffered with a TR5 and wasn’t smar enough to realize it ... so I doubly suffered with a TR7
It was the same with my early Harleys, Ducati and Norton .. I’d work a week on them to ride the weeekend .. my brother took his brand new 4 cylinder honda and pushed the button and away he went. I don’t think he changed oil the first two years because he didn’t know how. Just push a buttton adn go .. foever and ever ... arghhh
A real chick magnet.
A (not rich) black guy in Brooklyn nursing a vintage Jag.
Good for him.
Great story. Some things don’t change.
I assumed he garaged the car, but, even so, if someone saw him driving the car on a regular basis, it would make a very attractive target.
One of my old bosses had an XKE V 12...Hottest car I ever saw.
I never had an E-type, but I had a 1968 MkII/340. It had “issues.”
Most car thefts are late model cars like Hondas; low hanging fruit that can be chopped up for parts. There’s a yearly list of the most stolen cars, and it’s usually Japanese sedans, maybe some SUVs.
Kids looking for a joyride are going to grab something new and cool looking or something that’s easy to get a hold of, not something they are going to have to break into a garage for and that they are going to stick out like a sore thumb in.
I suppose that there are some thieves that specialize in cars like that, but I’ll bet that he’s got something like LoJack too.
I dunno. Most car thieves are pretty dumb.
TR5? A rare car. Only 13 months of production. I wonder how many are left.
Yep, good old Lucas. Driving a '71 Spit in 1985-86, I reverted to using hand signals for turns due to the fact that I got tired of having to blow out the flames in the steering column that flared up when I used the electric turn signals.
I suspect most of them (TR5’s) are in a junk heap, mine burned down to the rims sitting in the drive. But .. it was fun to drive. Rare? Probably because the mfg. is STILL working on fixing the 13 month of production cars built. But I was young and foolish .. I was self absorbed with the “driving” experience back then. Can you say moron? I can ....now.
The TR7 was a bit better, but I traded it after 11 months before the warranty expired. Yeah it sat in a dealers shop in San Diego 100 days out of the 330 days I owned it.
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