Thursday 25 December 2008

Oily Rag.


I know it’s really sad blogging on Christmas Day, but I was so moved by this picture my Mum made a card from that I had to share it. This was a Jaguar XK140 fixed head coupe my pal John and I ‘did up’ back in 1970. We bought it for £1000 and sold it for £2000 after fitting a replacement engine and respraying it. The engine came from a 3.4 Mk 11 scapper and we transferred the ‘C Type’ head from the knackered engine. She was sweet. It also had J.A. Pierce mag alloy wheels and Jag XJ6 tyres. John is bent double sanding with a pneumatic sander and I am sporting a flat cap sanding manually on the left. It looks as though we were flatting down the first coat of primer. It was a lovely car. Happy Christmas.

4 comments:

Fred Fibonacci said...

Fred remembers:

1 the Jag had a blue 'leatherette' cover on its centre dash panel

2 it nearly bought the farm on the Ashby to Measham road

3 the JAP wheels hung around for years afterwards, gathering a fine oxide bloom and many layers of bird droppings.

4 Due to an un-related back injury, John has been stuck in this position ever since, poor bugger. He also got drunk and tried to shoot his wife, but that was much later and in Texas so it hardly counts

Great photo, unbearably poignant. Can smell the cellulose.

Affer said...

Oily rag eh? When I had a motorcycle shop, one of my customers - a Brummy lass - rejoiced in the name of Gracie Wragge.

Peter Ashley said...

What an utterly original Christmas card. This time of year certainly brings stuff spilling out of the Memory Drawer. Wonderful.

Toby Savage said...

I did sell the wheels, much later. Our Mother has a knack of hanging on to things......