Keeping track of every Jaguar E-Type, with your help.
xkedata > blog > 2010

We now have a site dedicated to pre-war SS/Jaguar cars: ssjaguardata.com. Note that this site doesn’t cover any of the Swallow-bodied cars as they were not manufactured under SS or Jaguar serial numbers. Visit it here!

You may notice more cars with photos next to their dataplate, and more exterior photos of cars in that spot.

I updated the code that governs that image to take advantage of some CSS3 features to draw the drop shadow behind the image. This means I can eliminate the very narrow width/height ratio required before. I still require a horizontal rectangle, but much “shorter” photos can be accomodated, and even a bit closer to square, though only by a couple of percentage points. Users of older browsers, especially any IE older than the current version, will not see the shadow but should still see the image.

The images are generated on the fly (selected by algorithm–not hand-picked, in case you were curious), so you may briefly see an empty box which is replaced by an image as it is developed.

In any case, it should be more interesting to browse through the cars, now.

I finally got around to killing the kind of cruddy script which fed the eBay stuff into the left bar. The new code appears much more robust. However, I forgot to change the right column on the home page, so for a few hours this evening you got to study a PHP error message if you were so inclined. Should be fixed now, and no more fatal errors in the other script, either (hopefully!).

Thanks to PaulS and PeterI, I went through the sites and deleted a bunch of duplicate cars this weekend. About 100 duplicate E-Types went away and about 20 XKs.

One day, if I can find the time, I’d like to add a “hotbox” page and the ability for site users to flag cars (with a reason) to appear on that page. So if someone views a car and knows it’s a duplicate of another, it can be flagged and reviewed by admins and other site users. Most of the time it is a mistake that needs to be deleted, but sometimes it really is not clear which car is right and which is wrong. Worthwhile to expose those and discuss them.

Short and sweet: Check out the calendar previews. (Some images are preliminary.) They should go on sale by December 1, price will be the same as last year, $20.

Where Does the Money Go?

We use a “print on demand” service provider, Cafe Press, to print our calendars. This, unfortunately, means the price is fairly high and even so we don’t get  a lot of it back. Cafe Press keeps $15 and the “data sites” get $5 for each calendar sold.

These sites are run on a shoe-string budget–there is no real advertising, no subscription fees, no memberships, and no other beg-a-thons (so far!) to help with the running costs. The proprietor is not independently wealthy, either!

These calendars are our one major effort to raise a bit of cash each year.

We cannot afford to have calendars printed by a traditional press without a guaranteed sale number. The unit cost would be considerably cheaper, but it would be a financial disaster for the sites if we ordered $5,000 worth of calendars and only sold $1,000…or fewer. Last year we sold a total of 125 calendars.

My Car is in the Calendar, Shouldn’t I Get a Free One?

We’d love to be able to do so, but with the print-on-demand calendars, we still have to pay Cafe Press for each copy we order. Let’s say this year we manage to sell 200 calendars (up considerably from last year). 200 x $5 =$800 to put towards hosting costs. We have four different calendars, call it a total of 48 different cars. 48 x $15 = $720 our cost just to buy them, and probably at least another $200 in postage (most owners are overseas). Now imagine we only sell 100…yikes!

We do feel a bit chintzy about no free calendar for folks whose cars are featured, but it’s a non-starter.

Is this really the only fund-raiser? What about the eBay stuff and “donate” button?

We do make a bit each month from eBay, but the competition in that space is pretty fierce and the return doesn’t amount to much. Any time you click on an ebay affiliate link from someone else (if you see that the ebay link goes to “rover.ebay.com” it’s an affiliate), it knocks us out even if you originally linked, and bid, from a link here. There are a number of people who have set up eBay search pages which mimic ours, and where the only service they provide is a link to eBay, but that’s the way things go.

We’d love it if everyone only went to eBay from our links and subsequently bought lots of stuff–but until that actually happens the returns are very modest.

As for the donate button, ten people have donated in the nine years we’ve been online. We’re grateful to them but  you can see it’s not really a source of income.

Here it is late November and I’m just getting around to prepping the calendars. Please expect to find them on sale in early December…sorry about the delay. I think there may be a “motorsports” Jaguar calendar in addition to the XK and XKE items. Perhaps a Healey calendar as well.

I’d like to publish calendars by early November, so I need your photos by the middle of October. Here’s where we are, photo-wise:

XKs: Some great photos, looks to be a strong calendar this year. There are two or three photos which are not quite up to the rest (while still plenty nice and certainly usable), so upload your great shot in the next couple of weeks and there’s a good chance it will make it in.

E-Types: A strong year this year. I have a couple of photos which could be replaced if really strong contenders appear–especially if they were of an S2.

Coventry Racers: Probably not going to happen this year as I have no new photos at hand worthy of a calendar. Last year’s selection of shots was courtesy of two gentlemen, for the most part–I don’t want to press my luck this year by asking for more!

Saloons, XJ6, XJ-S: I think I have enough photos to publish a “catch-all” Jaguar calendar of “everything but sports cars,” though the selection is nowhere as strong as the sporting machines. If you have good shots of your classic saloon, XJ-S or XJ sedan, upload them!

Healeys: I think I can publish a Healey calendar this year, I have enough decent photos, but, again, if you have some great photos of a Healey, upload them to the site.

If you want your photo considered, upload it at a high resolution to the site and be sure to include your email address in the right slot (it doesn’t appear on the site in any decipherable form).

Just to remind folks, as cheap as this seems, I cannot provide anything other than my thanks for letting me use your photo. I have to buy the calendars like everyone else and only sell about 100 per year…I’d spend more than I make providing complementary copies! This is an exercise to pay for this site’s hosting, which costs upwards of $1,000 per year.

I’m not sure we’ll be able to repeat the Coventry Racers calendar as I’m not sure I have 12 new photos to choose from. But maybe! And if you have good shots of your Healey, XK, XKE or Saloon Jaguar, upload them to the site! Be sure to leave your email address in the contact field.

I won’t be able to lower prices this year as I don’t think I can take a risk on investing a ton of money up front without a known number of sales. I’ll do a bit of poking around, again, but it isn’t promising.

Ah, what could be a better way to start off the holiday weekend than another email from someone outraged over the site(s):

I placed my information on your site concerning my Austin  Healey # HBT7Lxxxxx and I was not able to edit the information I meant to say xxxxxx is my cars real number.  Later I find out this information is put out all over the internet search sites, that is my personal business, you have violated my trust in your website. This information is meant only for those fellow Healey owners on this site only. If you can’t remove the information from these search engines I will have to take action and I will have to withdraw my information from your site. Believe me I will talk to each and every Healey owner, about your practices. I would give you a phone number, to reach me, but I am afraid it also would be plastered all over the internet like my Healey information was. Let know what you are going to do about this matter.

Sigh.

1. Where in any of the information on these sites does it suggest that this is some sort of private owners-only club? The sites’ raison d‘être is exactly the opposite of that, and while I welcome owners I do not, nor do I want to, cater exclusively to them, as much as that pains a few of them.

2. Folks must arrive at this site somehow (via a google search, perhaps?) and (I imagine) browse a bit before they enter their information, if they do. I thought it was apparent that nothing is hidden here; everyone can see everything. My hope is that the sites’ openness and non-exclusivity foster enthusiasm among those who aren’t owners–and encourage them to join us on our journey to bankruptcy and ruin, er, enjoying our cars!

   Do I really need to let people know that search engines crawl these sites (just like the rest of the internet)? I go through reasonable pains here to allow people to be anonymous–owners as well–and to provide ways for people to get in touch without revealing any personal information. That said, if you decide to sign your name to a comment, it will be picked up eventually by google and others, I imagine.

3. Would the outraged of the world please quit with the blowhard stuff? I tend to smile, not tremble.

4. Has no one ever heard the adage about flies, honey, vinegar and all that? I normally try to work with people when they get their underwear in a bunch, but I’m far less inclined to when it’s Internet Tough Guy on the other line.

All that said, I removed this car from the Healey site. I used to fret about losing track of cars in this fashion, but at this point I could give a rat’s behind. Keeping track of a single car with an unpleasant owner just isn’t worth it. I’m posting this little missive so I can point future angry folks here without having to type it all up again. Shades of the (apocryphal?) bedbug letter!

I need a vacation! Anyone want to float me a trip to Goodwood?

What do you think of the idea of subscribing to buy a calendar (or calendars)? The thought is to allow me to get the calendars printed by a “real” printing press, which would lower the unit cost enormously, while enabling me to judge the print run and fund some of the printing ahead of time.

Instead of a calendar costing $20 plus shipping, it would probably bring the price down to $10 + shipping, and perhaps even a quantity discount (1 for $10, 2 for $16, 3 for $20, that sort of thing).

I would have to figure out a minimum quantity and a way to refund via paypal if enough weren’t sold by “press day.” In other words, if I needed 50 pre-orders to create a specific calendar, and only 20 came in for the Healey version before Nov. 15, I’d refund those folks–but if 70 people had pre-ordered the XK calendar, that one would definitely be a go.

Your thoughts welcome.