A BOY AND HIS TOY

HOW I BOUGHT MY E TYPE

IAN CAMERON

Virtually all males, and a few females, who see my E Type ask the same question: “Where did you get it?” I’ve answered that question for a dozen club members, so I thought I’d obviate the necessity to answer it for the other 60 or so. (Assuming, of course, that the male/female ratio holds true: otherwise I might have to tell the story 120 more times.) And besides, Doug does enough for the club: he shouldn’t have to write the entire newsletter himself. So here you go.

In October of 2005 my wife received word from Dallas that her brother Jim had been diagnosed with cancer, and had three to six months to live, unless the chemo worked, which didn’t seem too likely. One of the advantages of retirement is that it’s pretty easy to attend to unexpected events, so the moment the vintage was in the barrels, Mary and I packed up and headed for Dallas. As we both enjoy touring, we took the camperized Grand Caravan.

Had a pretty good trip down, missing the snow on each of the passes by a day, except for a while-knuckled two hours in south-eastern Oregon, and arrived in Dallas in four days. About the second day I was reading the local paper front to back, as I do with most newspapers, and came across an ad for an “XK E Jaguar Roadster. Great condition.”

“Gee,” I said, “I always wanted one of those. Never got around to getting one.”

“Well, why don’t you give the owner a call, and we’ll go and see it,” said Jim.

Now, the chances of me buying a Jag, or any other car, in Texas, were somewhere between slim and none, but given the circumstances the last thing I was going to say was, “I don’t think so.” So I phoned, to learn that the car wasn’t in Dallas, it was in Plainview. I thanked the guy, and hung up.

“That’s that,” I said, somewhat relieved. “He’s in somewhere called Plainview, in the Panhandle, wherever that is.”

“It’s in the northwestern corner of Texas,” said Jim. “Plainview is just north of Lubbock. You could go there on your way home.”

I’d heard of the Texas Panhandle, of course, but had no idea where it was. I had no great desire to visit it. On the other hand, I did have a desire to visit Lubbock, the home of Buddy Holly.

“Well that'll be the day

When you say goodbye

That'll be the day

When you make me cry

You say you're gonna leave

You know it's a lie

Cause that'll be the day, baby,

When I die.”

So we looked up Plainview on the Road Atlas (did you know that if you go to a Walmart you can buy a special WalMart edition of the Rand McNally Road Atlas, showing the location of every WalMart in North America, for under $5.00?) and found that indeed it was not far north of Lubbock, and after leaving Plainview one could go straight on north to Amarillo, turn left, and thence to Gallup:

“You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico

Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona”

We’d been all over the American SouthWest, but never to Gallup. Or Amarillo. That did it. We visited for a week, and headed west, with a bit of north. Lubbock has a Buddy Holly Way, and a Buddy Holly Museum. We drove one a nd visited the other. Spent a pleasant two hours there. Did you know that the first major radio interview, broadcast all over North America (on transcription), credited with helping Buddy become famous, was by a young disk jockey in Vancouver named Red Robinson?

Left Lubbock, arrived in Plainview about 4:00 PM. Well, actually just south of Plainview. See, the Texas Panhandle is cotton country. They grow enough cotton to make jeans for everyone in the world. And up until about 1980, all that cotton had to be sprayed about five times a year to keep the boll weevil at bay. And Plainview was the main crop dusting centre of the panhandle. So Plainview had a great big airport, at least great big for a town of fewer than 5,000 folks. Then along came Monsanto, and GM cotton^TM. (That’s genetically modified, as in GM food, which every one seems to hate.) However, in the case of cotton, GM cotton doesn’t need to be sprayed, as it’s immune to the boll weevil. Which meant, of course, that crop dusters weren’t needed. Which put the airport in Plainview out of business. Which meant a lot of empty hangers. We were supposed to call the car’s owner when we arrived at the airport, which we did. Ten minutes later, the owner arrived, and opened the personal door to hanger number three, a building large enough to hold four crop dusters, or one 737. It was empty, except for a small shape in one corner. There, under a drop cloth, was the E Type.

PART TWO

The first part of this odyssey ended with the words: “There, under a drop cloth, was the E Type.” The owner walked over to it and pulled it off, and I got the shock of my life. Or at least the shock of the past twenty years.

Mary and I have been married for 23 years this summer, and during that time have bought 18 vehicles, counting pick-ups and motorcycles, and several boats, mostly as a team. Our routine is well rehearsed.

Me: “It’s a little rough around the edges.”

Mary: “We don’t need another car.”

Me: “Had quite a bit of bodywork here.”

Mary: “We don’t have room for anything else.”

Me: “Tie-rod ends are shot.”

Mary: “You haven’t finished the last one.”

Me: “Don’t like the look of this rust around the windscreen.”

Mary: “I said, we don’t need another car.”

Me: “But still, at least it’s more-or-less all there.”

Mary: “Ian Cameron, you are NOT buying another car.”

And so on. By the time we get to an offer, the owner figures he’s going to have to pay us to take it away. This time, when the owner pulled the cover off, Mary said, “Oh, it’s beautiful.” Well, that was that. Of course, she was right. It was beautiful. Burgundy and tan are my favourite colours for an E Type, and if you’re going to have a toy, it might as well be a roadster.

She made a pretty good recovery, mind you, pointing out the pool of oil under the engine, the rust under the sills, and the fact that the trim was loose, but it was a rear-guard action and the owner knew it. On the other hand, this was a furrin car, sans air-conditioning, in a place where ‘red-neck’ is not a pejorative, but simply a description of virtually everyone who lives there. The average year-long daytime temperature in Plainview is 22 C, and the average daytime temperature from May to October is 28 C. As I write this, on April 28^th, the temperature in Plainview is 25 C, while here it’s 15. The market for E Types in Plainview is akin to the market for Green Peace bumper stickers: ‘slow’ doesn’t even start to describe it; ‘non-existent’ would be closer. So we took the Jag for a drive around the perimeter track of the airport, not something one gets to do very often, and it ran fine. Lots of boff, sounded good, steering a bit loose, but only in the column as opposed to the rack and pinion, gears were solid, as was the clutch. Wouldn’t idle below 1500, but I’d seen that one choke was stuck partly open. Tended to overheat, too, not something one wants in Texas but not as critical in Victoria.

So we thanked the man, and left. It didn’t take long to agree that we wanted the car, but I decided not to make an offer until we got home two weeks later, at which point I hoped he might accept a fairly low offer, at least low by E Type standards. The next night, at a motel in Gallup (“Free WiFi!!!”), after I’d conducted the business attendant on the web-based university course I was teaching, I looked for recommendations for car transport firms. I’d heard horror stories about such companies, and checked with the folks on the Alfa owners’ board, where I was an active member. The one company that everyone recommended was Reliable Transport, which happened to have an office in Phoenix, our next stop (after Globe, in the Aridzona mountains; what a wonderful place.) We stopped in at Reliable, were suitably impressed (they got real big, fancy trucks, Elmer) and Mary and I agreed that if we got the Jag, they’d do the shipping.

The lady at the desk (Goldie) asked me if we were in town for the Good Guys car show.

“Nope. Didn’t even know it was on.”

“Well, if you’re inta cars you gotta go see it. It’s at WestWorld, in Scottsdale. We’ve got a booth there. Have a look at the show and talk to the guys.”

WestWorld is not far from Taliesin West, which was a must see for us, so the next day, after paying homage to Frank Lloyd Wright, we went to WestWorld, parked about half a kilometer away along with several thousand other folk, and wandered through the one hectare tent, looking at the merchandise. (If you’ve ever seen the Barrett Jackson Car Auction, you’ve seen the tent: that’s where they hold it.) After half an hour, Mary said, “Aren’t there any cars? I thought this was a car show.” So we walked out the back entrance of the tent, and went through the smaller tents of the car makers, displaying fancy cars and trucks.

“That’s more like it,” Mary said, “But there aren’t very many, are there? I thought it would be bigger than this, since there are so many cars in the parking lots. And where are all the people?”

So I led her over to the edge of the blacktop behind the tents and looked down a ten foot bank into a ten acre grass bowl, holding about 3,000 fancy cars and 40,000 people.

“How’s that?” I asked.

Mary was speechless. It was worth the entire trip.

When we arrived home, I called Plainview and made an offer. Accepted. Arranged for transport, and then waited six weeks while Reliable shuttled cars in and out of Phoenix for the Barrett Jackson auction. The car finally arrived in Port Angeles, I picked it up and brought it home on the Black Ball Ferry, and two days later left for Japan on a three week rugby tour. Anyone who wants to bring in a car from the States, give me a call. It’s not hard, but there are things that can go wrong. Next issue: the inspection.

PART THREE

I’ve promised to give a talk in the fall on bringing a car in from the States, so I won’t spend time on that here, except to remark that the degree of difficulty depends entirely on the willingness of the people involved. You’ll be dealing with anywhere from four to seven agencies, governmental and otherwise, and if you get the right people it’s a snap. I was lucky 80% of the time, but the other 20% made up for it. You can hear about that in the fall.

I drove the car home from the Blackball Ferry terminal on February 8th, in a downpour, parked it in the garage, and went to Japan on a rugby tour for three weeks. Returned home, washed clothes, and went to Indonesia for five weeks. Finally, in mid-April, I started the process of licensing it.

In order to license a car in B.C., you must do one of two things. If you are a registered, tax paying new car dealer, you can import new models that have been certified as meeting Canadian and B.C. standards. If you are anyone else, the car has to be inspected by a certified B.C. inspection facility. There are lots of those around: virtually every garage that does mechanical work has the sticker in the window (and I wouldn’t take my car to one that doesn’t unless I knew the mechanic personally), but they differ in their approach to the task. Not in the care they take: I imagine that somewhere you could find a certified mechanic who would pass your car without looking at it, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The difference comes when the car fails the first inspection.

See, the rules say that if the car fails the first inspection you must get it re-inspected with a certain time period (30 days, as I recall) or bad things happen. That leaves you with two alternatives. You can take a chance, or you can find a mechanic who will give the car a ‘pre-inspection’, meaning checking it over without filling in the form, so that if anything needs fixing you don’t have a time constraint. Obviously, I recommend the latter course of action. Before you take your car in, ask the person doing the inspection if he will check out the major items first without filling in the form, so that if it needs work you have time to do it. Mind you, he’ll probably charge for his time: I would.

In my case, I didn’t need an inspection, pre or otherwise, to know that the car needed attention. To be exact, the windscreen washers, the high beams (and other lights), the horn, and the parking brake didn’t work, and it leaked oil like mad. And overheated. All things I could fix in a couple of days. I thought. (It also didn’t want to run very well above 4,000 RPM, but that’s not a safety issue. The inspection doesn’t say it has to go, just that it has to stop.)

The high beam was a loose connection – five minutes. The other lights (panel, map, instrument) were corroded fuses – two hours. I thought the parking brake would be just a broken cable, and the cable was broken, but the pads weren’t adjusted properly, and they’re hidden above the differential (inboard brakes, remember?) and it took forever (12 hours?) lying on my back, to get them adjusted. And I had to take the interior out, and machine two parts for the hand brake lever. And get a new cable, from the States.

The horn wasn’t nearly as bad, but the control, on the steering column, was designed to break. I don’t know what they were thinking. The worst, believe it or not, were the windscreen washers: not very important, in my opinion, but the rule is that if it was on the car originally it’s got to work. Getting at the tubes behind the dash was a nightmare: I now know that if one is doing anything behind the dash on an E Type, the first thing to do is take the dash top off. Takes 30 minutes, but boy, is it worth the time. As it was, it took me at least twelve hours to run the tubes, find a pump that would fit inside the original tank, and get the whole thing to work. At the inspection, the mechanic flipped the switch, the water sprayed on the windscreen, and I haven’t used it since.

Overheating? New otter switch. (Switches that bolt into a header tank to sense coolant temperature are called otter switches.) Oil leak? The mechanic understood that it’s a British car. No problem. And I was legal, and insured. But it took me about 25 hours, and if I’d been doing it while I was still working full time, it would have been more than a month. As I said, a ‘pre-inspection’ is well worth while. And finally, after considerably more hassle, I got collector plates. Now all I have to do is fix the alternator so that the meter on the dash says ‘15’ all the time, rather than some of the time.

The Lucas motto: "Get home before dark." Lucas denies having invented darkness. But they still claim "sudden, unexpected darkness." Lucas--inventor of the first intermittent wiper, and the self-dimming headlamp. The three-position Lucas switch--DIM, FLICKER and OFF. The other three switch settings--SMOKE, SMOLDER and IGNITE.

Lucas dip-switch positions: LOW and BLOW. The original anti-theft devices--Lucas Electric products. If Lucas made guns, wars would not start either. Alexander Graham Bell invented the Telephone. Thomas Edison invented the Light Bulb. Joseph Lucas invented the Short Circuit. Recommended procedure before taking on a repair of Lucas equipment: check the position of the stars, kill a chicken and walk three times sunwise around your car chanting: "Oh mighty Prince of Darkness protect your unworthy servant." How to make AIDS disappear? Give it a Lucas parts number. Lucas is an acronym for Loose Unsoldered Connections and Splices. Know why the Brits drink warm beer? Refrigerators by Lucas.

“What are all those switches for?” asked a friend. “Doesn’t matter,” I told him, “They’re Lucas, so none of them does anything anyway.”

Webster: “Sport: (a) Informal: a person with a well-developed sense of humour; one who sees the bright side of things” (b) One known for the manner of one's acceptance of rules, especially of a game, or of a difficult situation: a good sport. (c) One who accepts rules or difficult situations well.

Cameron: “Sport: One who drives a car with Lucas electrics.”

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