JAGUAR’S LAST TRUE SPORTING SEDAN
Never buy a used car on a rainy night. This message was hammered home to my brother many years ago when he was beguiled by a dark-blue 3.4-litre Jaguar Mark II sedan. Of course it is so easy to be wise after the event, but the one thing understood as you grow older is that you never stop learning.
We had ambled around to a private residence on a wet, wintry night in Auckland where the vendor, who for all the world resembled a Kiwi Arthur Daley, led us around the Coventry beauty. After the cursory inspection — in the dark — and a spin around the block, the Jaguar seemed like a good proposition. Following the usual wrangle over the amount of money involved, a deal was done, all were happy, and we drove off into the night in the British beauty.
However, the honeymoon was short-lived, as the next day the sun was shining and, oh, the now-dry bodywork did not look so flash. All those pit marks had been nowhere to be seen the previous night. Still, there was no going back. The wood and leather interior was still lovely, and the mechanicals seemed fine. An inspection underneath revealed two stripped bolts and some deterioration — all this on a car that was just four or five years old.
Not sure how long the relationship lasted, but it was far offices in Anzac Avenue. At this time in the early ’60s, it felt pretty special wafting silently along the leafy Epsom lanes in a Jaguar. There were not many other teenagers in Auckland driving that sort of machinery 57 years ago.
