Tag: Cars

Former Drummer Knob wrote to me, enclosing a listing for a house in Plano, and mischievously asked:  “It’s in your neighborhood.  Would you buy it?”

I have no idea why Knob would be looking at a house in Plano (from his penthouse in Monaco), but whatever.  I’ve shared the link but by the time this is posted, it will probably already have been sold — houses in the swanky Willow Bend neighborhood seldom last long on the market.  Still, it provoked a train of thought in me because, unusually for a house in the $2.5 million range in that area, it had four garages (most have only two or three).

You can probably guess where this is taking us, because I’m a total slut when it comes to cars and my likes and loves change quite promiscuously depending on what I happen to be looking at.

Nevertheless, I’m currently locked on a mindset which asks the question:  “If I wanted to escape the modern trend in cars of electronic everything, basically a four-wheeled laptop which has the added benefit of spying on your every move, would I be prepared to sacrifice some of the modern characteristics, e.g. reliability or handling, for that freedom?”

And the answer is, “Yes.  But I’d have to have backup.”

It’s no good having a car you love and adore when it’s in the mechanic’s hands and you need to make a grocery- or liquor store run.  One funny guy remarked on these very pages that if you collect vintage cars, you actually need more than one, for this precise reason.  (“Two is one and one is none… actually, sometimes even three is none.”)

But a 4-car garage certainly gives you the opportunity to indulge yourself.

So here’s my current list — for some reason I’m on a British kick at the moment, so a couple may be familiar from recent posts — of three desirable beauties that would make parts of me throb every time I opened the garage door:

1966 Austin Healey Mk III

1956 Jaguar XK140

!968 Jag E-type Series 2

Alert Readers will notice some similarities:  stick shift, wooden dashboard, leather seats etc.

“But Kim,” I hear, “didn’t you say you had a four-car garage available at your lottery-winning house in Plano?”

Indeed I did.  But given the history of the above three when it comes to reliability, I would have to have a car that would be absolutely guaranteed to start every time I turned the key, and for that, I’m afraid I’d have to forsake British cars because

Yup, I’d have to go Japanese if I wanted a supremely-reliable sports car.  And here it is:

1999 Acura (Honda) NSX

All the performance I’d ever need, matchless reliability, and as befitting its relative modernity, in crass shouty-yellow.  Also with a stick shift, of course.

But I know that some people are going to laugh at my fondness for old British cars, so next week I’ll go all-European, applying the same criteria for my selections.

News from the Car Company Formally Known As Jaguar:

Jaguar is set to embark on a daring strategy move as part of its transition to becoming an exclusive EV brand; the company says it won’t sell a single car for a whole year.

The British marque has pledged to become a ‘luxury all-electric brand’ from 2025, but to do so it says it will need to take a 12-month hiatus from the market.

Its last remaining combustion-engine model on sale will be the F-Pace SUV, which is due to bow out early next year. 

Wouldn’t have any of their existing cars as a gift, because with the possible exception of the F-type, they’re as ugly as Hillary Clinton’s knickers.  (Sorry.)

Anyway, I’d rather get an older Jag, any day of the week, e.g. this fully-restored 1956 XK140:

…which will cost you about the same as a new F-type.  Wait… 3.4-liter straight six, capable of 140mph, with a stick shift.  Try and get the same thrill as that with a Duracell microwave-on-wheels.

As for the opening paragraph of this post:  they may call themselves Jaguar, but they aren’t.

I understand the sentiment behind automotive purism:  the feeling that classic cars shouldn’t be modified at all, and kept in their original “as-is” condition.  These are also known as “concours” (or “concourse”) cars, and there’s a whole breed of people who inhabit this world:  owners, judges, nitpickers and so on.

It’s a specialty niche, and as I said, I get it.  (The Gun Thing has a similar niche — you know, the guys who won’t touch a gun unless all the serial numbers match, and hardly if ever actually, you know, shoot them.)

But I also like the other kind of car guy, the kind that says, “Yeah, that’s okay;  but really, times have moved on and we can improve on the original and make them more fun, more driveable, more reliable…”  You get the picture.

Here’s an example of the latter, in which Jay Leno talks to the guy behind the “Outlaw 356” ethos, whose company (Emory Motorsports) takes old Porsche 356s and rebuilds these rather underpowered beauties into rip-snorting performance models.

I want one.

I wouldn’t mind one of the “pure” 356s either, mind you;  but the Outlaw models… these are just excellent.

As Longtime Readers know, I’m not a Porsche fan, because they’re ugly.  But if I were ever in a position to get just one Porsche, the 356 (pure or resto-modded) is probably the only one I’d consider.

Here’s a little history.

And just for the hell of it, this is Jay’s favorite car in his entire garage.  And it’s been “sympathetically” restored.

I want one like that, too.