mercrocker wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 1:04 pm
Your early mention of "Cat Houses" caught my attention which might have wavered soon after discovering it wasn't about what I thought it might be about.....However, Jag Men have presumably caught the attention of many a pre-teenage boy in neighbourhoods up and down the country.
We had one or two such fellas, one of 'em went through a brace of Mk1s and a Mk2 before settling on a 2.5 PI estate when Jags became more expensive than a shagged out sixpot rustbucket should command. They all sat out in the rain because his double garage was full of boat stuff. He was an RNLI crewmember, a calling I often felt appealed to him so that he could floor the Jag or Triumph down to the beach flat out with all manner of highbeam and foglight action....
Another bloke on my paper round had that standard-issue crumbling E Type FHC of suburban renown, poking out of a car port whilst he drove to work in a battered Anglia van and spent his weekends trying to restore a neglected bungalow. He had a particularly hot missus though so no doubt was spurned on by the promise of bedroom action in return for renewing the guttering or summat. Before I left school, and the paper round, I noticed her waddling out of the house one day with a bun in the oven so that was the end of the E Type dream and it was swept away along with the Anglebox in favour of a Mk2 1300 Austin.
It is hard to realise that Jags, even in a relatively well-off rural village, were still quite uncommon in useage in the Sixties and Seventies and we rarely saw them unless on a day trip to Bournemouth or somewhere. Anybody with some dough usually settled on Rover, Humber or perhaps something with a VdP badge - there was something raffish and not quite respectable about a Jag. Certainly until the XJ6 came along and settled into the secondhand market. We actually had one down our street just before I left home, unthinkable a few years before....
In my home town there was the phenomenon of the "Seacombe Jag". This was nothing to do with the Goon Harry, this Seacombe was a slightly rough working class area of Wallasey that comprised of mainly terraced housing. As Seacombe Man is employed in either a local factory or has the usage of a tradesman's work van when the fuel crisis of the mid 70s trebled petrol prices causing the values of old Jags to plummet he seized his lifelong dream of Jag ownership by snapping up a bargain tatty Cat for buttons. He started with rough Mk2s and S-Types before working his way up the XJ6 chain. My first Jag, a 1979 S2 XJ6 3.4 auto bought in 1988 for a few hundred quid at the banger auction could be described as a typical Seacombe Jag. The rise of easy credit in the mid 90s largely killed off the bragging rights that owning a shonky Jag brought to the average Wirral bin man.
The amount of Seacombe Jags probably outnumbered the number of Seacombe E23 7 Series and Mercedes W116 S Class's combined.
In the late seventies, a guy I used to know bought a super clean 6 year old 2.8 XJ6 with the usual buggered engine for buttons. A rusty 3.8 E Type roadster supplied a replacement engine and the rest was chopped up with a felling axe and dumped in a large skip before being covered in rubble
mercrocker wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 1:04 pm
Your early mention of "Cat Houses" caught my attention which might have wavered soon after discovering it wasn't about what I thought it might be about.....However, Jag Men have presumably caught the attention of many a pre-teenage boy in neighbourhoods up and down the country.
We had one or two such fellas, one of 'em went through a brace of Mk1s and a Mk2 before settling on a 2.5 PI estate when Jags became more expensive than a shagged out sixpot rustbucket should command. They all sat out in the rain because his double garage was full of boat stuff. He was an RNLI crewmember, a calling I often felt appealed to him so that he could floor the Jag or Triumph down to the beach flat out with all manner of highbeam and foglight action....
Another bloke on my paper round had that standard-issue crumbling E Type FHC of suburban renown, poking out of a car port whilst he drove to work in a battered Anglia van and spent his weekends trying to restore a neglected bungalow. He had a particularly hot missus though so no doubt was spurned on by the promise of bedroom action in return for renewing the guttering or summat. Before I left school, and the paper round, I noticed her waddling out of the house one day with a bun in the oven so that was the end of the E Type dream and it was swept away along with the Anglebox in favour of a Mk2 1300 Austin.
It is hard to realise that Jags, even in a relatively well-off rural village, were still quite uncommon in useage in the Sixties and Seventies and we rarely saw them unless on a day trip to Bournemouth or somewhere. Anybody with some dough usually settled on Rover, Humber or perhaps something with a VdP badge - there was something raffish and not quite respectable about a Jag. Certainly until the XJ6 came along and settled into the secondhand market. We actually had one down our street just before I left home, unthinkable a few years before....
In my home town there was the phenomenon of the "Seacombe Jag". This was nothing to do with the Goon Harry, this Seacombe was a slightly rough working class area of Wallasey that comprised of mainly terraced housing. As Seacombe Man is employed in either a local factory or has the usage of a tradesman's work van when the fuel crisis of the mid 70s trebled petrol prices causing the values of old Jags to plummet he seized his lifelong dream of Jag ownership by snapping up a bargain tatty Cat for buttons. He started with rough Mk2s and S-Types before working his way up the XJ6 chain. My first Jag, a 1979 S2 XJ6 3.4 auto bought in 1988 for a few hundred quid at the banger auction could be described as a typical Seacombe Jag. The rise of easy credit in the mid 90s largely killed off the bragging rights that owning a shonky Jag brought to the average Wirral bin man.
The amount of Seacombe Jags probably outnumbered the number of Seacombe E23 7 Series and Mercedes W116 S Class's combined.
Barry Grant always epitomised the dodgy Scouse Jag driver for me, his S2 ended up dumped on a beach for the insurance . At the time I’d just had a S2 4.2 catch fire under the bonnet. Not an insurance job as it wasn’t technically insured, ( drive other cars not belonging on a 1.1 Escort)I did have a blank MOT and a nicely faded tax disc though. Anyway I put the fire out but the fire brigade turned up and I almost came to blows with one of the cunts who wanted to smash the dashboard out with his axe “ Because the fire could reignite”
This was my one and only S2, before that I had a 2.8 manual, and 4.2 Daimler S1’s , later a 4,2 S3 and 3.6 manual XJS. Before a big gap , then a modern S-Type and lastly an XF.
Off to search XJs on EBay…
899C6F45-AB2E-4B90-B0F9-7E528B4C9E54.jpeg (82.56 KiB) Viewed 6773 times
That's not too bad Warren. Rather fitting for a cabby i suppose. The issues start when a hearse driver who has been carting stiffs around for years decides on a career change and becomes a cabby. Imagine the carnage what would ensue when the fare taps him on the shoulder on his first night out.
