MAGNUS WALKER

b500 magazine

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 straightsix 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.

The car was clean, but it wasn’t love at first sight. And the lacklustre performance did not impress in the least.

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 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?

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.

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

favors. The car feels under powered and the horsepower has to be well below 200hp.

But what the car lacks in performance it more than makes up for with bags of character and comfort. It soon became the go-to car with a healthy dose of new-car fever. Our newly adopted dog Willow, a German Shepherd rescue feels most comfortable in this car over all the others.

Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer, stateside. It’s usually a busy time to travel, hit the beach, catch some rays, and enjoy the last days of summer. With a triple-digit heat wave this can only add to the excitement. So to me it seemed the perfect time for another shake-down drive in the Jag. After all how bad could it be?

One of the things I didn’t like about the Jag was the original cracked skinny woodrimmed steering wheel. So the quick fix improvement was a Moto-Lito steering wheel and hub replacement. This was a relatively easy procedure, but it involved another 100-mile round-trip drive back to Harry’s. The thick-grip leather-wrapped steering wheel felt better in my hands but did little to improve the Jag’s understeering characteristics. The second 100-mile trip on a 100-degree day was similar to the first until traffic came to a standstill. I had already left the heat of the valley, and the 101 and hopped on the 405 over the hill to the 10 freeway chasing cooler temperatures on the other side. (LA locals will know what I’m talking about here). Unfortunately the eastbound 10 freeway was slammed with traffic and it was only 3pm. After all it was Friday and the start of a three-day weekend. It was around this time that I started to sense a problem, so I moved over a few lanes on the freeway to the right shoulder closer to the exit ramps. And then it struck: The car hesitated and then almost stalled on me. Fortunately I was able to put the auto into Neutral, blip the throttle and keep the engine running as I shifted back into drive, took a deep breath and kept going.

A quarter mile down the road, it happened again. This time I was not as lucky as the car died instantly in traffic on the 10 Freeway. Of course this time the car didn’t restart. I hopped out and pushed the old girl across two lanes of bumper to bumper traffic. It’s amazing how no one even gave me room to push the car across those two hot lanes! Fortunately I was able to push it into a lay-by – unfortunately I was 200

yards past the Vermont exit. I tried several times to restart the car with no luck and no sound of the fuel pump humming.

This has happened to me before in my former E-Type Jag and often the car would start right up after things had cooled down, usually in 20-30 minutes. But not this time. No matter how many times I tapped the fuel pump in vain. As always a cell phone and AAA card came into the picture and the call was finally made. Over two hours later, the flatbed tow-truck turned up.

All in all a total breakdown wait time of almost three hours in 100 degree heat on the side of the freeway. To add salt to the wound, with the pandemic I was unable to ride in the tow truck with the car. So Hannah and Sergio came to the rescue and drove me back home.

On a positive note one person stopped and offered to help: Corey, a car guy and young chef. Long story short, I almost made it back as I was within five miles of home. Naturally everybody who heard this story thought I was crazy to attempt such a feat in an unknown 50 year old E-Type Jag but as the saying goes, “Only Mad dogs and Englishmen!”