I almost decided to get rid of my Jaguar

It was Christmas Eve Day. My wife and I had plans to meet friends for a movie and dinner. I opened the garage door and hopped in the car. I pressed the start button. All I got was a sickening "thunk, thunk." The electronics started flashing error messages on the dashboard. It was obvious that the Jaguar would not be our sleigh ride on this Christmas Eve.

Flashback: When I retired, I bought a new 2014 Jaguar XK. I have coveted Jaguars ever since I became acquainted with them in the mid-1960s, in fact since before I even had a drivers license. But over the years, I always had other, more practical priorities, like paying for college, getting married, buying a house, having kids, saving for their colleges, saving for their weddings, saving for the grandkids colleges ...

Me and my XK

My wife gets the actual credit for the Jaguar that's parked in our garage. She's the one who encouraged me finally to start a dedicated account to save up for a Jaguar. And by the time I retired, it was enough. I debated whether to buy a restored vintage XKE like I fell in love with 50 years ago. But I'm sort of mechanically challenged, and I knew I wouldn't be able to keep an old Jaguar running on my own. The XK model design was reminiscent enough of the XKE. So I decided to get a new one, anticipating that it would be more reliable mechanically.

Don't get me wrong. It's been pretty good. The only thing that's ever caused any serious trouble has been the electrical system.

Eyes Wide Open: I've always heard that the electrical system is fussy in a Jaguar. About once a year, I discover that the battery has drained unexpectedly and without any apparent cause. It happened earlier this fall. When I took the car in to have the snow tires put on (yes, I do drive it all winter in Minnesota), I asked the mechanics to check it out.

The verdict was that the battery was starting to get weak. "It's rated at 800 cold cranking amps, and the meter shows it putting out 600," the mechanic told me. He said that should be ok. But since the car was still at the dealer, he could put in a new battery, if I wanted, for $500. I gulped at that. Yeah, maintaining a Jaguar isn't cheap. But $500 for a car battery? That seemed unreasonable. So, I declined.

Now, when the car wouldn't start earlier this fall, my son-in-law lent me his jump starter. And that worked! The car fired up. I drove it around to recharge the battery, and I hoped that everything was ok. As insurance, I went out and bought a jump starter myself.

Not good enough, apparently. When we got home from a very nice dinner with our friends, I plugged in the jump starter that I bought so that it would be fully charged by morning. On Christmas morning, I went into the garage, hooked up the jump starter, got into the car and pushed the start button. All I heard was the same sickening "thunk thunk" and the electronics went berserk again. Frustrating, but it was Christmas Day. I didn't really need to be driving the Jaguar anywhere. And I knew it would be next to impossible to get someone to come out and help me get it started.

I thought, maybe my son-in-law's jump starter was more powerful. So later in the evening, I went over to his house and borrowed his Stanley JumpIt again. I charged it up overnight. On Tuesday morning, I hooked it up to the car. Much to my chagrin, still no action.

My Jaguar dealer provides emergency roadside assistance, including jump starts. I did have to call them one other time when the battery drained. I knew that it would be a long wait, so I decided to try one more thing. My local hardware store opened at 8 a.m. I ran over there and bought jumper cables. Came home and hooked up my wife's Honda . The Jaguar did turn over. But not with enough oomph to get it started.

Time to call in a pro. I dialed the roadside assistance number. Of course, I waited on hold for 20 minutes, but finally someone came on the phone, took my information, and put in a service call with a local provider. Ah, but now, I started to run into my own schedule conflicts. I had a couple of appointments to take care of, and the time that the auto service guy could come out wouldn't work. So I told them to just wait a day and come on Wednesday.

It was while I was running my errands (in my wife's car) that I had my moment of doubt. "What's the point of having a beautiful, high-powered car just sitting in my garage?" I said to myself. It's 4 years old, just over 30,000 miles. I wondered what I could get if I tried to sell it. But what would I replace it with? I liked the Volvo I was driving when I got the Jaguar. Maybe I'd get a new Volvo. Or maybe I'd shop for an electric vehicle.

Wednesday morning, a tow truck that was arranged by the roadside assistance service pulled into my driveway. It took 3 tries. But finally after 4 frustrating days, the Jaguar fired up with a throaty roar. I guess she'd just been sleeping.

As I drove up the street, on my way to get a new battery, the car surged ahead, as if to complain: "What am I doing on this suburban street? I should be flying down the highway."

I felt that familiar thrill. I'm driving a Jaguar! And all thoughts of getting rid of it evaporated.

Hertz has become my first choice for car rental

I doubt that headline will cause anyone at Hertz HQ to do cartwheels. I only end up renting a car once or twice a year. But after another great experience with the company in March, I decided to write a blog post about it.

National used to be my preferred car rental agency. Before I retired, Land O'Lakes had a corporate agreement with National. I had an Emerald Club loyalty card through the company, and it was convenient to also use it for personal travel. I still have an Emerald Club membership. I just haven't used it since retiring in 2013.

My first experience with Hertz came in 2014 as my wife and I planned a trip to Italy. For some reason (I can't really remember why) I was dissatisfied with the choices available from National. So I decided to look around. Hertz had the best options available to me at the time, so I decided to book through them.

We had a great experience renting the car in Italy. In order to facilitate the rental, I installed the Hertz iPhone app. I have to tell you, it's really a slick app. (One of the funny little quirks about it - whenever I rent a car, even in the U.S., the confirmation page on the app is in Italian.)

Since then, I always check with Hertz first when planning travel. And since then, I haven't found any better deals for the rentals I needed.

This most recent experience in March is a good example. We flew in to Los Angeles on a Saturday morning. Our reservation was to pick up the car at the LAX Marriott. As a member of the Gold Plus loyalty program, when I checked in at the Hertz counter in the hotel, I was offered an upgrade. So my wife and I ended up driving a Mustang convertible around southern California for a week. We both agreed that it was a gas!

That kind of service truly exceeded our expectations. So thanks, Hertz. See the happy customer below.

The Jaguar Question: New or Classic? Answer: Yes!

If I had discovered Jay Leno’s Garage on YouTube sooner, I might be driving a different car today.

As I’ve written in a previous post, I bought a Jaguar when I retired. Easy to say. But after I finally decided to do it, I had to decide whether to get a new car or a restored classic. I fairly quickly discovered that the price would be pretty close to the same. You can pick up a classic E-Type for less than I paid for the new XK that I was looking at. But then I’d have to pay for restoration (because I have neither the ability nor inclination to do the work myself, not to mention no garage to do the work in or tools to work with). So a nicely restored E-Type would have cost about the same as the new car.

Ultimately, I let ‘practical’ considerations carry the day. Now, I know it’s probably a stretch of the definition to say that buying a Jaguar is a practical thing to do. But my considerations all were practicalities about what I needed in my retirement car. I only have a two-car garage at my house. So ‘my’ car had to be one I could rely on and drive anytime I needed to go somewhere when my wife was already out with ‘her’ car. That also means it has to be mechanically reliable. I’d always heard how temperamental the E-Types used to be, and I didn’t want to get caught in a situation where the car would be disabled by mechanical problems.

So I decided to buy the new one. So now I have a mechanically reliable car and one that will maneuver through our Minnesota winters (with snow tires). It had been a while since I’d bought a new car, and I have been amazed and delighted by the electronics and how they enhance the driving experience. I was pretty skeptical about the back-up camera and parking assist. But I’ve become a convert. Now when I’m driving my wife’s Honda CRV, which does not have a back-up camera, I’m constantly twisting around to make sure I’m not backing into something, something that the camera and parking assistance in my Jaguar would detect and alert me to. And that’s just one example. I really am impressed by the electronics in new cars these days.

I probably never would have entertained second thoughts about my decision if it hadn’t been for my experience driving a 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider. (If you want to read about that, click here.) There were a few things about that car that made me really start to wonder: What did I miss out on by not buying a classic E-Type? Despite my fascination with modern new car electronics, I was totally enthralled by full instrumentation in the Alfa. So tell me – with all the fancy electronics, why can’t they have a virtual dashboard in new sports cars? And it was a roadster, so for two days my wife and I had fun tooling around town with an open top. Again with practicalities, regardless of my decision of new vs. old, I planned to get a coupe in either case.

The whole experience with the Alfa made wonder what it would be like to drive a classic E-Type. So where else would you look to find out? The internet.

That’s how I stumbled onto Jay Leno’s Garage. He has several Jaguars in his collection. The first video I watched, he was proudly showing off his 1963 Series I E-Type. Leno tells the viewer that the car is original and unrestored. As he’s showing it off, he remarks at least twice that the dashboard clock still works! During the program, he makes a comment along the lines that the E-Type really was a reliable car, at least in its day. (Of course, he has a staff of mechanics to make sure the cars stay in good running order.)

Then he takes the car for a drive. Wow! As he drives along, he delivers a steady patter of tidbits about the car and his views about the Jaguar and cars in general and car culture especially as it was in the early to mid 1960s. For me, it was totally enthralling. I know if I had seen it before I retired, I would have more seriously considered finding a classic.

Now, my bottom line, I have no regrets about the 20014 XK that I bought. It’s a great car. But, if I ever win the lottery, I’m getting an E-Type. And as much as love the coupe, it’ll be a roadster, like the one below.

Italian fantasy–behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo

When my wife and I were in Italy (April 2013), we rented a car for a few days of driving around Tuscany. It was a Fiat Punto. It was a nice little car. In Italy it’s classified as a ‘super-mini.’ Here in the U.S. I guess it would be called a subcompact. It was reasonably fun to drive while visiting the medieval hill towns. On the highway, it would cruise along fairly easily. I think the fastest I pushed it was 120 km/h (72 mph).

But, it was basically just transportation. And being on vacation in Italy, I couldn’t help but wish for a more stylish ride.

Fast forward to 2015. I had an opportunity to drive a 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider ‘Quadrifoglio.’ One of our auto dealers in Minnesota has a collection of ‘heritage’ cars available to rent. (Check out Morrie’s Heritage Car Connection.) When I first heard about it, I wondered why ‘heritage’ and not ‘classic’ cars. At least according to Wikipedia, the most common definition of a classic car is 25 years or older. (An antique car is 50 years or older.) At least according to that definition, the 1987 Alfa Romeo I checked out from Morrie’s would qualify as a classic. But some of the other cars available are newer than that.

But I wasn’t so much interested in whether or not I was driving a classic. I’d never driven a sports car like the Alfa. I was just interested in the experience. It was great!

When I started planning the outing, at first I thought about taking a day trip along the Mississippi River to Red Wing for lunch. But within a few hours of picking up the car, I changed my mind. A trip to Red Wing would involve too much highway driving, and for this car, I wanted more of an engaged driving experience.

Morrie’s recognizes the character of the car. On its web site description it says that the Alfa “may not please your inner speed demon.” That’s true. The car has a 2-liter, 4-cylinder engine. Again, the web site says it best: “It needs to be coaxed a little to make the most of it.” But the coaxing is fun. The engine revs eagerly and shifting is quick and smooth.

When I picked up the car, I drove it around the parkways and lakes in Minneapolis, just to get a feel for its personality and to get used to driving a stick shift again. When I learned to drive, the car had a manual transmission. And since then, I’ve driven manual transmission cars, like the Fiat in Italy. But I don’t do it every day, and it does take a while to get back in the swing of it.

There were a couple of notable things about the car. First of all, it was a convertible and it was small. We kept the top down thru the whole time driving it, only putting it up at night. It made a big impression on me how close everything seems while driving it. For example, backing up – I twisted around to see where I was going, and the back of the car is right there. I could reach back and put my hand on the trunk. And driving down the highway, even small American cars seem to loom over the Alfa.

Another thing that I really loved was the dashboard. The car had full instrumentation. Besides the speedometer, tachometer and fuel gauge, there were little gauges for oil pressure, water temperature, and ammeter. That was another flashback to my early days of driving. It used to be that those instruments were important things to watch, to make sure things were running smoothly and you didn’t overheat the engine.

Like I noted earlier in this post, I abandoned my original plan to drive to Red Wing. Instead we drove to Woodbury and then cut across country to Afton. Then we followed the river road north to Stillwater where we had a nice lunch overlooking the St. Croix. It wasn’t exactly like driving through Tuscany. But it was fun.

And really, that’s why you’d rent a car like this. Or own one, if you have the garage space and if you have the mechanical ability to tinker with it. (It is, after all, an old car. It had 91,000 miles on the odometer. It rattled a little bit on rough roads.)

You’d also drive one to be noticed. That worked for us, too. As we were cruising along the freeway, in the middle lane, 60-65 mph, there was a steady stream of cars in the left lane zooming past us. We saw a few look over with a combination of curiosity and (dare I say) envy. One of the cars that blasted by was a Maserati. I’m sure I saw the driver ease up a bit as he passed us and give us a respectful nod.

My Jaguar is not a snow cat

When I retired last summer, I allowed myself one indulgence. I bought a Jaguar XK. I knew it wasn’t the most practical choice. But I’d coveted a Jaguar since before I could (legally) drive. All through my working life, there was always something that took precedence over it – buying a house, remodeling the kitchen, saving for the kids’ college, saving for their weddings, saving for the grandkids’ college. So when I started to plan for retirement, I resolved that I would finally get one.
As I worked with the representative at the Jaguar dealership, he asked if I planned to drive the car in the winter. I said ‘yes.’ I only have a two car garage, and I certainly didn’t want to store the car for four or five months of the year. I figured as a retiree, if the weather ever was so bad that I didn’t feel comfortable taking my Jaguar, I’d either take my wife’s car (Honda CRV with all-wheel drive) or I’d just stay home.
I’m not so naïve that I’d expect a car salesman to say, “Well wait a minute, Steve. An XK is not really a winter car. Maybe you should consider something else.” And he didn’t. He said, “Put snow tires on it, and you won’t have any trouble.”
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I had my heart set on an XK.
I don’t think I’ve ever put snow tires on a car that I’ve owned. I think I’ve always just relied on all-season radials. But that’s what I did. I had a full set of snow tires mounted on the car in early December, just before we started getting significant snow in Minnesota. And technically, he was right. I’ve been able to get around during winter weather. I haven’t tried driving it in deep snow. The car is so low to the ground I’m afraid it would get hung up even with snow tires. But basically I can keep it from slipping and sliding, and I’ve been able to keep it moving when I need to.
Of course, it helps that I learned to drive in cars that had V-8 engines and rear wheel drive. It does take different techniques to handle winter road conditions. Some of them are actually kind of fun. I was doing a u-turn at an intersection when the road was just a little slippery. As I was turning, I remembered to flutter the throttle just a little. Sure enough, the rear end slipped around and we took off down the street, just as slick as you please.
But really, the car is not built to trudge along at 20 miles per hour in stop-and-go traffic. It’s just not as much fun to drive that way. It’s really made for driving 85 mph on a clear, dry road (someplace where that speed is legal) on a sunny spring, or summer, or autumn day.
Also, I really hate seeing the road spray and ice mess up the pretty paint job on the car. It seems disrespectful. Fortunately, the dealer offers free car washes. So I stop in as often as necessary, and then drive v-e-r-y carefully home to avoid getting a new coat of slush on the car right away.
During the ‘polar vortex’ that kept temps in Minnesota below 0 F for 80 hours, I kept the car mostly parked in my garage (attached to the house, but not heated. It got pretty cold in there as well.) But I did have a meeting in Buffalo, MN. I considered not going; I could have called in. The roads were clear and dry, it was just beastly cold, and I decided it would be good to run the car at highway speeds for a while. I worried a little about it freezing up. But we didn’t have any problems. It ran smooth and quiet the whole way out and back. No speeding on this drive.
Still, I can’t wait for spring.