The New Jaguar XKSS – Jay Leno’s Garage

42 Comments

1. Jay, great work…but this format needs fine-tuning. We don't want to meet all these Sales Jerks, like the fuckwit in this vid.

2. Ooooh, lovely this …..

3. Sir Stirling Moss was 87 in 2016 not 97. Do I win an XKSS?

4. Could that car be any more beautiful !

5. The argument over "beautiful cars with character and soul" versus "safer, more economical, more reliable" goes on without resolution. There are a few reasons for such an unresolved issue:

   1. The corporations and government weigh in on the discussion with more influence than any of us.
   2. Women can be enlisted to join the discussion with overwhelming preference for the new cars.
   3. Women rule the pocketbook in marriage and (of course) when they are single.
   4. The new cars are produced with robots, printed circuits, plastic. Producing something like a classic car would now cost too much for the mass market, and that's where the money is.
   5. Modern driving conditions present different demands on a car – Bumper to bumper, clutch-eating, valve burning, sparkplug fouling, pollution-drenched, endless idling-angst traffic; Bumper to bumper high speed freeway driving; frequent fender-bender screw-up accidents; too frequent crazy drivers aiming their ton and a half missiles at our treasured cars.
   6. Incompetent service and repair personnel that you wouldn't want working on your treasured car.
   7. Mass housing that forces large parts of the population to park on the street where anything can happen to our treasured cars.
   8. Insurance corporations needing more and more safety features that restrict design and construction.
   9. Planned obsolescence, rapid overturn and replacement, making auto manufacturing more a matter of cheap production similar to household appliances than expensive durable products.
   10. And finally, the matter of quality itself, as expressed in appreciation of quality, i.e. Taste – Especially individualistic taste. Taste is a quality of the personality that is little understood and valued in modern times, and there is a reason for that: Good Taste goes against the requirements of the mass market and control of the masses. The "Law of Supply and Demand" is something the industrial corporate elite must work constantly to re-invent, now turned upside down and operating more towards creating demand and making "appeal" more a matter of conditioning the masses than influencing the behavior of the producers and providers.

   For myself, raised by a father (and mother) who felt the aesthetics of quality in all things, I've inherited the same ethic. My father was a formally trained automobile mechanic, race driver, later a pilot and aircraft mechanic – from 1910 to the mid-1950s. I grew up playing in a large warehouse and shop where aircraft components were bought and sold and reconditioned. Pilots know quality. I picked up on a lot of that ethic. As a child I spent many hours sitting, playing, daydreaming in cockpits of surplussed WWII and Korean War -era PTs and fighters, and later did my part in disassembly and parts-removal. Once about 1966 I helped a couple of old timers take apart a P-47, trashing the center section and wings, and I can tell you it wasn't an easy job with hand tools, even after the ship had lain outside in the weather for some years. The two pilots said they wouldn't be afraid to take one up after seeing how sturdy it was built. That's one aspect of quality. Working on instruments especially gave me a wonder and admiration for the quality build and design.

   I had an Alfa once, a '58 Giulietta coup. I restored it almost to completion. It seemed so friendly to my hands, as though it were intended to have human touch from the controls to the engine compartment. The instruments were individual pieces fitted into the dash – Repairable, admirable. After that, I've mostly had to accede to the demands of modern life and go with newer Asian models.

   As a final note, musing on the matter of mass psychology, there's a statement I read decades ago that stuck in my mind: "Taste shows character, and character is destiny." If that is true, and I believe it is, then I wonder if conditioning the public to accept products and life-styles that appeal to taste of a lower consciousness results in a population with less, lower, character. That might explain a lot about the decline of our culture.

6. Jay what kind of watch were you wearing in the Steve McQueen car? Great video.

7. Dunlop invented modern
   Braking

   .

8. The old Jag coupe's, sedans and saloon cars had great road handling. It was popular, back in the day, that these cars were retrofitted to have a 351cu inch V8 motor.

9. You'll have to explain to me though why these cars are better than the Swallow versions which have upgraded XKE suspension and brakes….and you can get LHD. On another track though, "modern" aerodynamics seemingly are not needed; the SS/D Types could do 180 mph properly fettled. And make the next corer.

10. Great engine music