August

For the past eighteen months, I have had my yellow left-hand drive demonstrator sitting in California and it is time to go out and see Jason Len again and put some miles on it. I fly to Los Angeles and spend the night with my friend Alen Cooper who is now working with Mike McClusky building Shelby Cobras and also restoring original Cobra cars. I pay a visit to the workshops and see a lot of expensive work in progress.

The following day I take a local flight on a small aeroplane up to San Louis Obispo. When I arrive at Jason’s showroom on Fiero Drive my yellow car is sitting outside waiting for me. Jason has booked space for one of his XK140 Jaguars and my car at the Laguna Seca Historic Race weekend. Jason puts his car, along with his show trailer, behind a diesel engine rig to drive the few hundred miles north up the Old Highway One to the Monterey Peninsular. I leave SLO to drive the SS100 along this wonderful scenic route and enjoy the driving. Jason follows a day later. As I drive north, the Pacific is cold and deep blue on my left. I have a small pair of binoculars in my bag and it is possible to stop on the many cliff-top viewing points and look down to watch sea otters at play and there are fabulous flights of pelican feeding up and down the coast. Thoughts of a swim must be put aside even in late summer as the water is much too cold although there are a few brave souls kite-surfing – a most dramatic sight. Because I am not in a hurry, I take the opportunity to stop at almost half the service areas and each time people eagerly gather round the car for a closer look. I meet Alan Collins, a keen Jaguar enthusiast from Colchester, which is less than thirty-five miles from me in England, but I meet him for the first time halfway round the world. He too is driving to Monterey in a rental car all the way from San Francisco. I have an excellent room at the Holiday Inn Express with the bonus of a jacussi in the gardens and I make the effort to indulge myself every morning and evening. On the Friday night there is an extraordinary auction in Monterey. Fantastic collectors cars, Ferraris, Bentleys, Invictas, all in seemingly perfect condition, are driven onto the stage in the vast show-hall to receive bids through the auctioneer. The auctioneer uses ‘markers’ – these are guys who physically stand beside the keen bidders for each lot and verbally encourage them to keep bidding up and up for their chosen car. It is quite clear that the intimidation by the ‘markers’ has quite a dramatic effect upon the prices achieved. Race driver, Phil Hill, drives his ex-Le Mans winning Ferrari onto the stage and I watch the car being sold for $4.500,000. There is an extensive party atmosphere in the whole of Monterey that evening and when the auction finishes at around 9.30pm I spend an hour enjoying the town after dark.

Saturday and Sunday were two hectic days on the show stand with Jason Len and some of his colleagues. The yellow car attracts a lot of interest but it is clear to me that the colour is definitely a disadvantage. I resolve that if the car does not sell at the show (it didn’t), I would ship it back to the UK and re-spray it, probably in British Racing Green.

I have a couple of good walks through the pits and meet a few old friends from England who were in California racing their historic cars and have lunch with Dennis Eynon who is racing in one of the vintage events.

Monday dawned and I have a hectic drive back to San Louis Obispo in order to catch my connecting flights back to the UK.

October

The Jaguar Enthusiasts Club (see their details at the end of this article) arrange a tour of South Africa. Late in August I had shipped my red SS100 Jaguar LNW 216 along with Alan and Gaye Holmes’ Suffolk SS100 and forty-seven other UK Jaguar cars to Durban. When we arrive, the cars are all ready and assembled at the Zimbali Lodge Hotel and for the next twenty days we drive over two thousand miles through South Africa. Unfortunately, a minute leak in one of the cylinder liners of my car aggravates each day of the journey by a persistent loss of water that necessitates frequent topping up. Whilst the fault does not delay us overall, it was annoying as the car otherwise performed perfectly.

Our journey takes us from Durban via some of the Zulu areas and the Sani Pass into the Drakensberg mountains. We are at Spion Cop during the daytime. We journey north to Pretoria where we join the Rovos railway. We spend two days eating and drinking in luxury on this huge train that was specially built on a slightly larger guage track than the railways in Europe. We visit the Kruger National Park, which looks extremely barren as the leaves are in their autumn mode. This makes viewing the animals much easier to see from special Land Rover viewing cars. We bag the ‘big five’ (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros) quite easily before lunch. We enjoy another tour into the park after lunch and a visit to an elephant reserve in the evening, before returning to Pretoria by train. We also visit the South African Mint, but no free samples.

We then journey on to Sun City via the Cheetah Research Centre. The last hundred miles of the drive to Sun City is during the late afternoon and incredibly hot. The sun is low in the sky, bright red and shining directly into our eyes. The luxury of Sun City is a welcome relief and we have two days of indulgence before leaving for Kimberley. I had originally decided that I did not want to go a mile below ground but changed my mind upon realising that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and the diamond mining process is fascinating. Basically, you move a thousand tons of rock and if you’re lucky you might find a few small diamonds. We view the original pipe, which was dug by hand to a depth of one mile into the ground.
After leaving Kimberley the route took us via the Great Karoo desert to Graaff Reinet. The altitude is above three thousand feet and the daytime temperature is in excess of 40c.

The car is running well but needs frequent water re-fills. The next day we drive south to Knysna via Ootsthorn, a beautiful resort area, and we spend two days here with many of our party going out to watch the dolphins and whales – unfortunately nothing is seen. The following day we drive along the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth. This is the effective end of the journey and the following morning we take the cars to the dock for loading and home. The tour was extremely well organised and everybody had a great time.

(Jaguar Enthusiasts Club Limited website: www. jec.org.uk)