A Jaguar Awakens

Today, February 2, 2013, a very big day!!!

We started later than we wanted but started the 2-1/2 hour drive to San Luis Obispo by 7:30a.m. to British Sports Cars.

Why British Sports Cars you might ask, when it is so far away? Well we had an amazing thing happen to us. A couple of years ago Rafe Saber from Canada, the guy who put us in touch with BSC started a face book page for Jaguar owners. He has since started several other pages for various Jag owners. So Rafe loves his Jags and has enjoyed making the connections between people, events and Jag restoration companies. People post Jaguar related events and companies will post the Jaguar related items for sale or services offered.  One such company on the site is British Sports Cars.

Unbeknownst to us, Rafe and Justin from British Sports Cars spoke via facebook and came up with the idea of starting our car and videotaping the whole event. Their thought was that the video could be seen throughout the world as a “Rip Van Winkle” car. Rafe sent me a message via facebook about their idea and we in turn sent a message to Justin via facebook. We then actually spoke by phone and, of course, met in person.

We actually had sent messages to Justin about 1 year ago inquiring about their services after Justin posted photos of their service garage. So you see we all met on facebook, never knew of each other until we joined the facebook club, the true power of social media.

What is amazing to us is that Rafe and Justin afforded us the opportunity to have our car inspected and then today’s event without charging us anything. For this one simple act we will be forever grateful because we would have likely not gotten started with any restoration for some time to come. Starting a project like this is daunting at best but with their push we have quickly gotten excited about getting our baby on the road.

So back to today’s event; we got into San Luis Obispo about 10a.m. but were unsure where to park. Now we have a big crew cab truck with a long bed and we were pulling this car trailer. There was no place to park in front of the shop so we put the blinkers on, parked in the left hand lane on the one way street and I went in to get some instructions. A crowd quickly gathered along the sidewalk, people looking and pointing at our car. A woman asked me what model it was as I walked into the BCS shop. It was so exciting to see the reaction from so many people as they all were ooh’ing and awe’ing.

Justin soon came and along with his father guided us to the rear of the shop.

After getting the car off the trailer Justin got to work adjusting this and that. The lights worked fine but other electrical items need work. With 3 of the BCS people the car started with a roar! We didn’t remember it being so loud! It was a tremendous sound to us. Justin was unable to drive it because the fuel pump does not work but that will be fixed in good time.

And just a side note, British Sports Cars has the car Amelia Earhart drove sitting in their shop. I was thrilled to not only get to see her car up close and personal but got to sit in the very driver’s seat that she sat in!!!

A day to be remembered!