Battle Cat - Jaguar D-Type At Autodromo Nazionale Monza In Forza 6

If there was a single car that really put Jaguar on the World stage, it was the D-Type.

Produced between 1954 and 1957, contemporary estimates claim that 18 factory team race cars and 53 customer cars rolled off the Coventry, England lines. Sporting a massive fin behind the driver's headrest and constructed using an aluminum alloy monocoque chassis design and bodywork, the D-Type is more of a revolution of style and performance on the track than an evolution of the previous C-Type model.

Despite some technical issues with it's 3.4 litre engine during it's debut at the 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans (finishing 2nd), the D-Type would win the event in 1955 and 1956. For 1957, a new 3.8 litre engine proved to be a real winner for the Jaguar, finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th.

The D-Type was also raced at various other tracks and events, such as Rheims, Sebring, and Cumberland to name a few.

For 1958, Le Mans imposed new regulations for sports cars and Jaguar complied by building a new 3.0 litre engine, but not one D-Type even finished the race that year.

Over the years, remaining D-Types have skyrocketed in value when they have made an appearance on the market. In 2016, RM Sotheby's Monterey auctioned the very car that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1956 for $21.78 million. Lower end, poorer conditioned vehicles can still fetch $3-5 million.

Since my bank account doesn't quite have that much laying in it, I will have to settle for the only other option I have to drive one....

A bit of a sidenote. In 1957, Jaguar decided to offer up the remaining and partially uncompleted D-Types as the XKSS. 25 were planned to be sold and 16 versions did find buyer's hands. A fire at Browns Lane plant destroyed nine cars that were waiting to hit the road.

However, in March 2016, Jaguar made the announcement that it would restart and complete the original 25 car order from 1957. Nine replacement cars were painstakingly hand built to original specifications and despite the $1.4 million price tag, all were sold.

The Replacement Problem, or Absence and Disappointment, Final Chapter

Now, where was I? Right, continuing from here.

Friday, May 25th, 2018, 6:05 pm.

It had been 11 days since I collected my freshly fixed Dodge Dart from the dealer/repair shop and in that time I also traded an old job in the country for a new one in the city (same company, just different work locations). My wife's Honda HRV had served me well and I think she was rather glad to get it back, life felt like it was returning to normal. However, Fate, Karma or whatever supernatural force at work had different plans for me.

On this particular Friday, I started my car like I normally do, drove to the site, shut it down and mingled with any remaining workers that were finishing up their day. The weather had become unseasonably warmer and less than five minutes after my arrival, I was already sweating. So, after my greetings and updates from the progress that was made during the day from the workers, I returned to the Dart and tried to start it, blast myself with some air conditioning.

The Dodge performed it's usual "bells and whistles" as I turned the fob, but the gauges went...funny and nothing else happened. A few more attempts produced the same results. My first two thoughts was the battery was dead (which I couldn't see how, since the car had been starting just fine up no less than half an hour before) or an electrical connection had come loose, somehow. I stepped out of the car and gave my wife a call, asking her to locate and bring me the "booster pack" she had got for me the previous Christmas.

Despite only having a 75% charge, the car started and I let it run for a while, then I shut it down. A quick turn of the fob recreated to same useless results as before. No big deal, I thought to myself, I will just take it to the dealer tomorrow and they will have a look. Yeah....no.

The next day, before noon, I boosted the car and drove down to the dealer, pulled up to the service department and talked to the first guy behind the counter I saw. I explained the issue and showed them a video I made (see the image at the top of this page). "We can take a look at it...." he said, flipping through what looked like an appointment book, "on Thursday?" I was stunned, "So, for the next six days I have to embarrass myself at work by boosting my car, or possibly cause more damage to it, since I don't know what is wrong?" The look I got back could have been an exact match for this....

After a minute of silence, I broke it by saying, "Fine then." His reply was, "Does 10:30 in the morning work for you?"

Perhaps my customer service expectations were too high, crazy thoughts of immediate attention given to my problem, or even the offer of a loaner vehicle and leaving mine behind, but I was past the point of being livid. I walked off the lot, away from my car and across the street to the pre-owned/used section.

Already the seeds of ridding myself of the Dart had been planted when I run into, of all people, the salesman who sold me the car a year before. I took a chance and explained my problem and showed him the video too. He directed me towards vehicles that were considerably more expensive than what I was paying out on my crippled Dodge now. I just left him talking to the air as I returned to the Dart, boosted it and drove off home.

For the next six days, this was my "going to work" routine.

Every time I popped the hood, connected the booster to the battery, got into the car, started it, got back out, disconnected the claps, closed the hood, re-entered the car and drove off, just added to my pile of negative emotions. I was determined to have the car repaired and by done while the whole deal.

I did entertain the thought of talking to the General Manager about my situation, but after a search on the internet for the dealership on the Better Business Bureau and reading the exchanges between him and other customers, I decided that would have been a waste of time and breath.

Finally, the booked day had come and I drove back down to the dealership and made my presence known. I handed the fob off and was told it shouldn't take more than an hour or two the diagnose and repair. For a moment, I was starting to reconsider "dumping" the Dart. I gave my phone number, so they could call me when the job was done and they arranged a courtesy driver to take me home. Okay, I was rather impressed with how this was all going (bare in mind, there was different people behind the service counter than from six days before).

The ride home was a quiet affair, since I worked the night before and was operating on very little sleep. After being dropped off, I wasted no time at setting an alarm for a two hour nap, since that was the bigger time frame they had given me for the "find and fix." However, my phone was right beside me and close to my ear, just in case.

For whatever reason, no alarm went off and I awoke on my own four hours later. A quick check showed I didn't miss a call from the dealer, so I called them. "Yeah, we finished with your car a few hours ago, do you need our courtesy driver to come and pick you up?" I wasn't impressed and any thoughts I had about keeping the Dart quickly vanished when I arrived to collect it, after I had to payout $540.00 for diagnostics, a new battery and getting some electronic module flashed.

Right then and there, I was done with the dealer, their staff and any thoughts of purchasing future products manufactured by FiatChrysler.

One Pricey Cat - Jaguar E-Type

In life, there are many objects of desire that are never acquired by those who yearn for them.

Take me and the Jaguar E-Type for example.

The closest I have come to touching one is taking the above, long distance picture of a black California beauty a few years back. There is a couple of very nice examples driving around on ideal weather days where I live, but too elusive to be captured on camera.

Enzo Ferrari is quoted to have said, "The most beautiful car ever made," about the Jaguar E-Type when he first saw it at Geneva Auto Salon in March 1961. Since then, they have become one of the most coveted cars created.

Over it's 13 year production run, the E-Type changed a bit, but nothing too dramatic. The Series 1 E-Type Jaguar (also known as the XK-E in the US) was produced between 1961 and 1967 (in fact, the top pictured car is one example). Simple identifiers for these cars are glass covered headlights (if they haven't been removed), small front grille and turn signal lights above the bumpers.

Manufactured between 1968 and 1971, the Series 2 sported uncovered headlights, a larger grille opening and larger turn signal lights below the bumpers.

Series 3 was built from 1971 through to the 1975 model year. Some big changes include a covered grille, fender flares for a  wider track, lower air scoops and longer wheelbase.

As you can see, I posted the results of a recent search for E-Types for sale in Canada and those prices are on par with more modern performance cars....

....like this 2018 Jaguar F-Type, for example (a mere 10 minute drive from my house).

Granted, if I searched long enough, it is very possible to find E-Type that would be initially cheaper to buy, but then the mounting costs to bring it back to a safe and roadworthy condition would be....yeah, no.

Instead, the only other option to own and experience the thrills of a Jaguar E-Type is through the virtual world of video games. Have a look at a British Racing Green 1963 E-Type Lightweight racing around Autodromo Nazionale Monza, with yours truly playing Real Racing 3....

Night Life - Softroading A Mitsubishi RVR

One of the main reasons behind trading off my Dodge Dart to a Mitsubishi RVR was "workplace versatility."

A deciding factor in this decision was an odd email that was circulated this last winter, banning contractors and employees from a certain location with front wheel drive vehicles (yeah, I wasn't impressed to see that, nor could believe the follow-up explanation I got for their logic on that announcement). Another factor was this big boulder that didn't clear the under body of my previous vehicle.

Up to this point, I hadn't the opportunity (or location available) to try out the All Wheel Control system or gauge the lighting in very dark, off-road conditions. With just under a month of ownership, it had been mostly in-town on pavement driving (other than the test drive, but that is another story).

One thing that annoyed me earlier on with the Dodge Dart was the inability to dim right down or flat out turn off the dashlights. Pictured above, the instrument cluster is dimmed as far as it can go and the infotainment screen has been turned "off", but you wouldn't be able to really tell by the standby glow it produced.

Now, here is the Mitsubishi RVR. 

At a causal glance, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference, however, the instrument cluster produces a softer white and without a factory infotainment system, the "easy on the eyes" glow from the stereo/HVAC controls is a lot more bearable.

With internal/external lighting looking good, it was time to test out traction, power and road manners on an unpaved surface. Granted, this isn't a trial run for the Paris-Dakar Rally, nor am I in the legendary league of Tommi Mäkinen, but this short road offers a sample of future routes I might need to travel, without unreasonable or illogical restrictions.

While I do have camera mounts that would have made viewing the video a lot easier to tolerate (especially in the very bumpy sections), this was very much an impromptu opportunity and seized it with what I had at the time. The buzzing sound, if you heard it, was the rear license plate. Since it was only mounted at the top, the bottom part was free to create that slightly annoying sound.

With the one hand, I held my phone to capture this first person view. the other was steering the RVR without issue. Of course going downhill is the easy part, nothing more than an exercise in direction directing and braking, uphill almost required my second hand, since the bumps and ruts played with the front wheels.

One feature of the RVR I particularly like is the clean underbody. There is nothing hanging down to take away from the advertised ground clearance (my Limited Edition model claims 215 mm or 8.5 inches).

Until now, I have never even heard of the Nexen brand, but I will keep an eye on how this set of Korean tires that came with my Mitsubishi hold up over time. I was pleasantly surprised how the Nexens and MacPherson Struts kept the ride up and down the hill rather....civil.

It might not have been the worst road I could find, but that wasn't the real point of all of this. I wanted a first time look at just how "soft-road" capable the RVR could be on a path that I could have taken my former Dodge Dart on and down, if I had not made the decision to let it go.

Ironic Update For Real Racing 3

Real Racing 3 just put out their 6.4 Mercedes Update and one of many new cars added to the game turns out to be a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II.

I am laughing quietly to myself, considering just last year I bought and abandoned a dream of high ambitions with the real life car the race variant was based on.

To read more about the latest Real Racing 3 Update, give this link a click. If you are not already playing it and want to give it a try, go here for iPhone/iPad or Android.