SOME of the most beautiful creations in the history of mankind came in the shape of Jaguar motorcars, before Jaguar went mad and destroyed, its secret gods of design; and none more beautiful than the Jaguar XK 140 from 1951.
Its lines are perfection; feline grace - made permanent in poised and styled metal - all that coiled musculature and sinew, ready to pounce and, slay, ripple beneath the bodyskin of a car which growls as you approach it.
There is one but one colour for such a car; it is red. Not fire engine red, not British pillar box red, not the vulgar phallic red of the inadequates who zoom around in car vans with rock music booming from their windows; but Jaguar red, deep and strong and brave, the red of an open topped car on an open road beneath a permanent sun in a perfect blue sky.
Lucky Card
And this was the lucky card, the ace of spades, which I drew for the Norwich UnionRAC Classic last weekend, with Vivian Daly the racing driver at the wheel; this amongst the assorted Singers and Hillmans, Borgwards and NSUs, Vauxhalls which were once rakish and now were chromium roues, MGs, Bristols and Lotuses.
And there in the middle of this array of elderly wheeled metal was my Jaguar, sumptuous as sin, purring beneath a perfect morning. It was the car in which a male driver should have a 22 year old blonde alongside him and Vivian, the lucky devil, had got me instead.
One thing became clear as soon as the cars headed out towards our first halt, Malahide Castle. The XK 140 skin was designed by a Michelangelo. The internal workings seemed to have been engineered by bricklayers.
The steering wheel had about a foot of play in each direction before it engaged the front wheels. The general effect was like stirring porridge. There was no instant way of turning left; that kind of manoeuvre required the planning you'd put into docking an aircraft carrier.
Turning the other way was simpler. All you had to do was brake and the car would simply spin about on a mystery, axis and charge at right angles snorting angrily, like some jungle feline mother which suspects you have designs on its cubs. The first time Vivian braked, we were almost halfway across Bull Island and into the Irish Sea before his wild steering correction brought us back to the Malahide Road, his companion shrieking a farewell act of contrition.
In addition, the steering wheel appeared to be of the removable variety, lifting completely out of its mountings, if you so wanted. Its horn was mute as goldfish. Its indicators did not indicate.
But the old Jag has a beautiful old dashboard, with delightful little dials which inform you how many amps are being stored in the battery, and another little dial which indicated that the water in the radiator was about the same temperature as the surface of the sun.
We entered the grounds of Malahide Castle trailing steam like a bomber limping home after receiving some rough treatment over the target.
Vivian lifted the bonnet, which encompassed the spade sized radiator, to have a look. It was a marvel of British engineering; when the bonnet is propped on its rest, the radiator is at a perfect height to remove a hand span of hair and skin from the back of an unwary mechanic's head. Vivian raised his inquiring head from the engine, and promptly had the back of it amputated by the radiator.
Concerned Drivers
The raised bonnet drew concerned Norwich Union drivers in a troubled cluster. "The overhead grommet's probably discombobulated with the netherwards camshaft," said one. "Maybe. But I don't like the way the grimble bearings sound. They could have decogged the flange bracket and blocked the cylinder head pistonshaft just above the clutchplate mounts."
A Bristol owner nearby was talking Bristols. There clearly was but one topic of conversation in his entire life. "The Mark Four eleven Bristol, now, that was a pig, a pig, you hear, a pig, unlike its immediate predecessor the Four-ten-MM. The Fout-ten-MM had that double carb, twin cam, overend bilinked valve, which Bristol should never have got rid off. Never. It was a crime, a crime, what they done to the Four-ten-MM, all them changes, and then calling it the Four-eleven. A bleeding crying, shame ...
Let us weep for that man's, wife and her breakfast ordeal - let us weep before moving off - on the road again, through the green pastures of north Co Dublin, with the top off the car and the sun on our faces and the wind in our hair; and every time Vivian touched the footbrake, the dear old XK 140 shied into a ditch.
But never mind the modest failings of the beast. To be in that car was to know what it was to drive in the great days of country motoring, when there were few cars on the road, and convertible sports cars would not be turned into scrap metal within minutes of being parked in a city street.
It was like being in a 1950s film, driving through the innocent byways of Dublin and Meath, down unvisited country lanes with hedgerows drooping with blossoms, and the mountains of Wicklow blue and tempting on the horizon.
Doffing Caps
Ratoath, Dunboyne, Maynooth, Rathcoffey, Prosperous stood in awe, some even doffing their caps in stunned respect, as this masterly example of red perfection cruised through their somnolence. On this perfect day, with banks of cloud chasing across the blue sky, everywhere looked quite wonderful, and permitted the thought; what other capital anywhere enjoys such easy access to such delightful countryside?
Kilmeague, the Hanged man's Arch, Kildare town, the Curragh, sheep fatly grazing, Kilcullen, the Liffey fatly flowing, Laragh and the Wicklow Gap; and the glories of Wicklow on a summer's evening as the participants of this Norwich Union RAC classic cruised in ecstasy.
Dear editor, please can I have a staff car? A Jaguar XK 140 convertible, made when the British still understood the occult truths of car design, will do nicely, thank you. Yours sincerely,