{"id":21375,"date":"2011-07-13T15:42:45","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T14:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.influx.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=21375"},"modified":"2014-06-13T08:43:23","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T07:43:23","slug":"a-tale-of-two-jags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/a-tale-of-two-jags\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Jags"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am eight years old and playing in the small back garden of our suburban house. I hear a deep loud resonant blast of a horn from the road out front It is Dad, returning with his new car from the showroom.<\/p>\n

Running around the corner of the drive I see him pulling slowly up at the garage. The engine note is a low heavy burble. The handbrake ratchets and the engine stops. My Dad has a massive smile on his face, My mum, standing at the front door has a small, almost shameful one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Image: Michael Fordham<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018So you got it then?\u2019 She says.<\/p>\n

It is a vibrant and glossy red Jaguar, sticking out on our street like the shiniest apple in the orchard. Dad\u2019s business was thriving and this was the reward to himself for a successful year.<\/p>\n

My brother and I took our shoes off and climbed around the inside. Dad turned on the 8-track and Mum told him to turn it down. I sat in the driving seat and rolled the huge wheel from side to side. Dr Hook<\/a> throbbed out of the big speakers.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago I got a call from a good friend who asked if I wanted a 1993 XJ6. He knew I liked old saloons, and that the Merc I was driving had seen better days. I asked him what colour it was. “Sort of a dark red”, he replied.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ll take it”. I said.<\/p>\n

On the way up to collect the car I remembered that time in my life, the child who started to love cars from the moment my Dad brought back that beautiful saloon.<\/p>\n

In time I could have told you what any car was on the road from one glimpse. I knew a car by the rear light cluster, I had Scalextric with rally Minis. Films like Smokey and the Bandit<\/a> and Convoy <\/a>were big sellers in the cinema. The Dukes of Hazzard<\/a> was soon to appear on Saturday TV.<\/p>\n

We all had CB radios, we all had handles<\/a>, we chatted to truckers passing on the main road at the end of our street. We played Top Trump Super Cars <\/a>at school. \u2018DeTomaso Pantera\u2019 I\u2019d whisper in awe.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a>Image: Patricia Robertson<\/em><\/p>\n

The moment I opened the door of the XJ6, memories came flooding back. There was the smell of leather and British workmanship. As a child the smell had been almost too heady, pungent and primal. In the heat the smell grew more and more intense, producing a sickening stickiness that didn\u2019t help when my hot little legs would glue to the leather.<\/p>\n

To get through the hours of boredom on our long summer journey to the south of France I would try to read comics, but quickly turn white with nausea. \u2018It\u2019s the static.\u2019 my mum would say. She made Dad install a rubber and steel conductor that reached the road from behind the mudguard.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t the car for the Mediterranean. The Jaguar XJ6 from 1976 was a Northern European car. It was halfway between Get Carter<\/a> and The Long Good Friday<\/a>; it celebrated 1970s British culture and left a legacy of the times in its workmanship.<\/p>\n

This was the decade of strikes; British Leyland suffering from the stubborn unions and the popularity of cars from abroad. Even then I thought some of the switches and furnishings were below par. Did the carpets have a Leyland logo? I can\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n

My 1993 model is not that dissimilar to the one from 1976. The gear stick has changed from the sleek T shape<\/a> in Chrome and Bakelite that looked as if it had come from a BOAC jet, to a regular polished wood ball.<\/p>\n

I remember there had been plenty of buttons on the dash, just plain black rocker switches- they had been upgraded with the times to include an air-conditioning unit but still had the same sense of no-nonsense utility. There was one less large ashtray in the current model, and the beautiful dash mounted glove box from the seventies had been replaced by an airbag.<\/p>\n

I guess people just don\u2019t wear gloves like they used to.<\/p>\n

I was heading home down the A303 recently and suddenly I became conscious of me and my new car. We were cruising along at 65, burbling pleasantly at 2000 revs. According to the computer we were averaging just under 30 mpg. I put my foot down and overtook a line of slower, less dignified traffic. I had a vision of myself somewhere between a law-abiding family man and a freewheeling, hardworking entrepreneur not afraid of taking a little risk.<\/p>\n

This, I\u2019m guessing, is where a lot of Jaguar drivers would like to see themselves\u2026<\/p>\n

http:\/\/lee-robertson.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lee Robertson\u2019s history repeating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1779,6],"tags":[1113,2003],"class_list":["post-21375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars","category-features","tag-british-cars","tag-jaguar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Tale of Two Jags - Influx<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lee Robertson\u2019s history repeating\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/a-tale-of-two-jags\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Tale of Two Jags - 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