Final straightening for my last trip

I have decided to sell the old car. It’s now on Bring-A-Trailer: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1963-jaguar-xke-series-i-roadster-2/ from April 17-April 24 at 2:15 pm.

It’s sat in a bay in the Garage Mahal for a couple years—two? three?—gas tank drained, sans battery, under cloth cover. And it seems a shame that having been wrangled to a point where it’s actually a moving thing, a beautiful car no less, it’s shrouded and as often a nuisance object in the garage as something I fondly think about.

So, it’s time.

I began the spruce up in mid March 2025. Spring is coming a little early to North Carolina, so cold has been chased from the garage. I had some things to do to get it started. I had to replace the battery, of course. And naturally, in the process of putzing and scrubbing and putting to rights, a by-way or boo-boo will nag and get in the way. Power seemed blocked somehow, and I hit the shop manual and wielded my multimeter.

Power fixed (I bypassed the ancient ammeter—do those old things go bad?) and gasoline residues cleaned from the lines, the old car fired up, actually without even a groaning complaint. I was surprised.

As it shapes up, of course, doubts about selling it rise within me. The old car is a pretty thing, and it’s been in our garage for nearly a quarter century—certainly long enough to make a claim on space and persist in my mind.

But, still … it’s time.

Going up for auction on Bring-A-Trailer

It’s up for auction on Bring-A-Trailer beginning Thursday, April 17 for a week. I had a good experience with the sale of a 1987 Porsche 924S there. The process was clean and transparent, and it was, well, fun! My wife was able to watch the closing minutes of the auction and she said it was the typical auction experience: a little exciting to see people’s attention converge and the tally rise to an end. A little like a horse race. (Unfortunately, I had to work, so I missed it.) Now the car’s new owners are driving it around Palm Beach, Florida, and I had the privilege of talking with them in a Zoom call. So nice to see that new owners take an interest in maintaining and preserving an automobile—a father and son pair of enthusiastic care-takers and drivers.

I’m hoping that the next owners of the old Jag will take the same level of interest and care as the new owners of the old Porsche have.

For me, restoring this E-type been a real trip. Begun under rather dispiriting circumstances, the car has come back together well. That said, it was much, much easier to take apart that it was to put back together, fixed and fancy.

Here’s what it looked like on September 13, 2002—a Friday, of course—after making it from just outside of Suffolk, Virginia (“BELOW“). And below that gallery, what it looked like on its maiden voyage to the BP station in Rougemont a few years ago (“AFTER“). Since that drive, post restoration, the car’s not changed much, except I notice that wheel spokes are rather dull in the photo. That’s been spiffed up nicely. Yet, the car has hardly moved—which is reason enough to let it go to a new garage somewhere with new and windy roads all around.

BEFORE

AFTER

The posting on Bring-A-Trailer of course has lots more pictures.

It’s part of a book, too!

The car became a focus of a years-long book project, too. I’m in the process of revising it at this point, and I hope to be able to fish around for a publisher later this year. I have already pushed out some bits and pieces in online articles:

So the experience of bringing a heap back onto the road will be memorialized and ruminated upon for others, too.

I think whoever buys the car will get a signed copy of the book, assuming it finds its way to the bookstore.