A 47-Year Jaguar Journey By Charles Bodman Rae When I joined the JDC in South Australia in 2017, I was introduced at meetings as a “new member” of the JDC. Well, sort of. I was a new member in SA, certainly, but I was by no means new to the JDC. This little article aims to explain how I came to be at the same time a ‘new’ member here in SA but also perhaps one of our JDC members of longest standing, overall. My First Jaguar At the tender age of 19 I first joined the JDC in England. That was in 1974 (47 years ago). My mother had just handed down to me a gorgeous 3.4 litre Mark II (slim-bumpered 340, to be precise) that my father had bought new in 1967. It was manual with overdrive finished in Old English White with red leather upholstery and acres of wood. Sadly, I only managed to keep it for four years. One day when my mother was using the car it suffered the unprovoked indignity of being rammed broadside by a car hurtling out of a side road. Although entirely innocent and repaired she was never the same again, her body creaked and groaned, and VWR 275F (such was her name) was sold, with teary eyes all round. My First Car At this point I should confess a parallel non-Jaguar car allegiance. My very first car, passed down to me by my mother when I was just 17, was a 1958 MG ZB Varitone Magnette (OKY 736). At the (even more tender) age of 17 with that car I joined the MG Car Club.
Charles Bodman-Rae, 2001 Silver 4.0 litre XK 8 Convertible
After the trauma of parting with the Jaguar 340 at the age of 23 I invested in my first convertible, a bright red MGB Roadster. I was in a seriously committed relationship with that car for 16 years and together we travelled all over Europe, including the then Soviet-occupied East, and two years in Poland, where I met my wife. We only sold the MGB when our daughter was born (the usual story – we needed a car big enough to take a folded pram).
My Fathers Cars The Mark II 340 was my father’s first Jaguar in a long, unbroken sequence of 44 years that lasted until his death in 2011. Each time he bought a new Jaguar (all XJs – except the XJ40 - from 1970 onwards) instead of selling the one he already had he would pass it to a family member. By this means we sometimes had three or four of his current and former cars parked at home. We were (and still are) a Jaguar family. He bought his first XJ6, a 4.2 series 1, also in Old English White with red leather upholstery, in 1970 (WVH 50J). I have wonderful memories of that gorgeous car and of travelling around France, Italy and Switzerland with my mother on a kind of Grand Tour in the European summer of 1975.
Charles removed the over-riders, fitted a recessed Adamesh grille with horizontal ‘splitter’ and added a green-toned JDCSA badge
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My father had intended to come with us, but at the last minute there were pressing matters for him to attend to with his business and he couldn’t get away. Rather than cancel the trip and disappoint my mother he reached across the dining table one evening and stretched out his hand to give me the XJ6 keys and said: “Take my car. You and your mother have a great time.” And so we did, cruising in style down through France, wafting
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