The Early Years

by Keith Carlson

Spring of my college freshman year, I bought the TC I’d coveted for 10 years since their appearance here after the war, just as we had years earlier pressed our parents to buy us the thin-frame, thin-tire English bikes, de riguer in our Chicago suburb. Our fraternity had three TDs, a TR2 and a new XK140 OTS. Soon after my purchase, we joined with two other fraternities to rent one of the old palatial dance halls for a black-tie pretend-grownup evening. I was dating a very fine junior who shared my adventurous spirit. After the dance several of us made a small caravan to an abandoned estate that we had discovered, on a bluff overlooking a lake. A magical ink-black first night of spring, warm, special. I had opened the rear-hinged door of the TC and stretched a leg out, and with my glamourously-gowned girlfriend beside me, the gang declared us Scott and Zelda.

Then a bit of a low, a few weeks after that high, when something locked up in the front end, putting me in a sideways skid for a stretch to a high curb which took me over. Fortunately I had been driving slowly and with no passenger. Also fortunately, the car went left over right, so the seat came toward me as I dived toward it. Only upside down, I could crawl out with mere cuts and bruises, and could limp away after righting the car with some people nearby who had rushed over. This happened near the end of school,
so I fixed it up enough to get home, so long as I avoided tight turns. Its mangled body attracted much attention on the highway.

Back home I renewed my friendship with my fun-loving local sweetie, and began hanging out with a great group of guys through sports car ownership. One of the more experienced told me about a place in California named Moss Motors, as the preferred source of parts. I dispatched an order for right wings, bonnet, windscreen and the double-curved cowl piece that it’s mounted on. Had them shipped to my father’s factory so that someone would be present at delivery. I had just started working there for the summer, and a rather puzzled shipping department called me: one of the various crates was enormous. That iconic double-curved MG cowl piece came mounted on the firewall, sides, and lumber rails. My friends and I separated the needed pieces and I kept the rest for the future.

I learned that a man in our town was selling his Jaguar Mk IV DHC, and I was smitten. I came to realize that it wasn’t all fantasy, as some other college student/sports car lovers, if they could get a deal on a car around Chicago, were driving them out to Los Angeles which was such a hot market that they’d make enough for it to be worthwhile, plus—what larks! I was transferring to Berkeley that fall, so I could enjoy the car for the summer and drive out to school via LA. Borrowed the money from an older brother and a deal was made for the Jag.

What a kick to pad out barefoot onto my folks’ lawn on a summer day and decide which car to take into town. I had cut away enough of the MGs right front wing for steering, lashed the bonnet, and I’d have driven with the now-missing windscreen down anyway. On one of these magical ink-black evenings my lady and I discovered the advantage of the Jaguar’s open front/closed rear configuration. If we settled ourselves in the back seat, we raised no unwanted attention.

The gang lived for parents’ getaways. We would move in to their spacious homes for the weekend, and the expeditions of carefree adolescent life were pretty fine.

But once again cold reality interrupted the joy, as the lateral force of the TC’s skid had caused an interior crack in one of the motor mounts under the transmission, causing it to move sideways a bit. A tack by the local welder had it back on the road. Most unfortunately, after several such iterations the stress became too much. I was going about 50 or so when the U-joint separated, sending the drive shaft arcing through the bell housing to bounce off the instrument panel, popping out the tach and speedometer, aluminum chips flying everywhere. Quite a surprise, that. I sadly sold the static car with an array of crated parts.

I was about to leave early anyway, to have a few weeks in LA to sell the Mk IV. So in August of 1957, I made one of the last trips down the original 66, all two-lane, in certainly one of the grander cars to do it—and without mishap. Drove ’til falling asleep, pulled behind gas stations, and crawled in the back seat (all alone), and discovered the first night in the desert that daytime 90s become nighttime 40s.

I stayed in Holmby Hills, California, with a bachelor cousin of my father’s, a former soap-opera star who was now a voice in Disney and other films, and quite happily came upon a hometown girl at the Farmer’s Market, who put me in touch with one of her beautiful and charming classmates, and my string of wellborn-but-ignoring-it companions continued apace. Those scenes of the carpet of lights spread across nighttime LA from the hills really exist.

I had put ads in the paper ahead of time, and in between showing the car I explored the area’s possibilities, and sure enough, with my Brooks summer suit and a tie, and in that car, I enjoyed afternoon cocktails a few times in the Bel Air Club. The gate attendant figuring a kid in that car must be a member’s son.

The Jaguar didn’t sell right away. I had actually overpaid and hated to take much off. So when I learned that my mother had just gone to Las Vegas to divorce my father, I figured I’d take a break and drive up there. It was a very cold drive through the mountains once the sun went down. One of the wing-nuts holding the top to the windscreen broke, my right hand became a C-clamp—soon a frozen C-clamp—holding them together. After another stretch the ball joints started to go, my speed had to reduce to 55, then 50, 45, able to move my frozen hand down to shift for the grades. The drive took forever. Of course no way to alert me poor sainted mum, and no gas stations or any businesses along the way. My parents made contact long enough to agree to subsidize my loss—“just sell the car and get on with things”—bringing a sad liquidation after all the fun.

But what a grand series of British marques has followed! And I just recently made yet another purchase from Moss Motors, who I’ve also enjoyed for the past 55 years. MM