b500 magazine
MAGNUS WALKER Man with a beard
Man with a Beard Builder, Collector, Driver Born in Sheffield -1967 Wrote a letter to Porsche as a 10 year old wanting to be a car Designer Lives in Los Angeles since 1987 Car Enthusiast
I
’ve owned a lot of cars. More than 80% of them were never advertised for sale. In these modern times, we all have the Internet, which shrinks the world down to the size of our smart phone and makes global car searching quite easy. Occasionally though, a random conversation will lead to a car purchase. This is how I found my second E-Type Jag—through a random stop and chat at our local coffee shop with my neighbor, buddy, and fellow car guy, Raj. We’ve all had these type of chats that all start off with, “What’s going on?” I’m looking for an E-Type Jag, I said. Raj replied, “You should buy my Dad’s.” Raj is the type of guy who is always wheeling and dealing, with cars coming and going quicker than the women in his life. As for his Dad’s E-Type Jag, the good news was, it was a running car located within five miles of where I lived. The bad news was, it was a 1970, 2+2 automatic. To many the Series 2 straight-
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six 2+2 auto may just be the least desirable of the range. Naturally, I had to go look at it straight away. The close proximity was an added bonus.
Harry at SportsCars Classic. The fellow Brit and London native knows his way around a Jag. And after all, how bad could such a journey be in a 50-year-old car?
The car was clean, but it wasn’t love at first sight. And the lacklustre performance did not impress in the least.
Harry was impressed with the white E-Type and gave the car two thumbs up and that was good enough for me. It was at that moment I knew I would be buying the car. ‘Me baby H’, was also smitten with the white hunk of steel.
I didn’t bite that day, but I thought about it for the next few days. The Series 2 2+2 is a long car. The wheelbase is nine inches longer than my former ’67 Series 1 E-Type. It differs also in a few subtle and not so subtle ways. Gone are the front glass covered headlights, replaced by open-faced sealed beam headlight units. The front windshield is raked further forward toward the front hood in an effort to improve air flow over the new higher contour of the roofline. The turn signals have been replaced below the bumpers – this is not an improvement in aesthetic design. The wheel lugs no longer have the knockoff spinner wings. Inside, the toggle button switch gear has been replaced with rocker switches and perhaps the thing I miss the most, the push-start button. This always represented a James Bond race-car-like drama to the start procedure. A few days later, Raj offered me the car for an extended amount of time. It only seemed natural to me to take the car on a 100-mile shakedown test drive in 100-degree heat to go see local (ish) Jag guru
My return back along the 101 freeway through the valley, in triple digit heat was quite a journey. The automatic Jag takes a long time to get up to speed but cruises really nice between 70 and 90 miles per hour. My confidence was gaining with every minute and so too was the temperature gauge, which moved right up to the end of “normal” on the dial, which caused some mild anxiety but it never made it into the red. Upon my return to DTLA, I made Raj what I considered to be a low-ball offer and quickly struck a deal which made me the owner of this long sleek 2+2. The white Jag causes quite a stir as they are rare on the roads, even in car-jaded LA. I had forgotten how long the front bonnet is and how poor the turning radius is. With no power-assisted steering the car feels heavy to manoeuvre and park at low speeds but the steering lightens up once the car is moving. Acceleration is non existent as the three-speed auto box does the inline-six no
