A Family and their Jag

Many years ago, about 1973, a kid received a Jaguar XK 140 from his father. The kid decided to sell the car for the price of an airplane ticket to Europe and listed it in the paper. At that same time a pair of newlyweds decided to see if they could pick up a sports car. Not having much money they decided to look in the classified ads. Seeing the ad for the Jaguar they quickly rushed off to Household Finance and got a loan to cover the Jag plus a little extra to make sure it was theirs.

The newlyweds got their Jaguar the very next morning and drove their car all over. A couple of years later they had a baby boy. Since there were no seat belt laws or child seats their baby was held by mom or dad whoever was sitting in the passenger seat of the 2 seat car. Top down the little family tooled around in style.

The Jaguar owners grew older and the family larger and alas the car was put into storage with the plan that someday the car would come out of storage and purr again.

So 35 years later here we are, and parts of this blog will memorialize the restoration of our girl waking up.

A month or so ago a facebook friend, Rafe Saber, connected us with British Sports Cars.

Justin Jurgens from British Sports Cars then stopped by our house to inspect the car and gave us lots of pointers on how to proceed but he really preferred to start the car at his shop in order to actually drive the car and access the motor. That will happen tomorrow.

We have removed the wheels and checked the brakes, front are expanded and won’t go back but the rear appear to be fine. We filled the inner tube inside the 35 year old tires and believe it or not they are holding air! We do promise to buy new tires next but to get the car on the trailer in a hurry we are making do.

We had a big plan to get the car onto the trailer, just the 2 of us. But as these things go; we needed a new wench, needed fuel for tomorrow’s trip, and on and on. So it was getting to be late afternoon.

We backed the trailer up onto our driveway but realized that we did need a little help. One neighbor was home and came over, then another came home and came over. Soon we had 2 more helpers plus moms and sisters with the cameras, dogs on leashes to help protect us. It took a neighborhood to get the car up.

Now for a glass of wine then an early morning to British Sports Cars.