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

Very soon we’ll be kicking off an exercise to gather everything that can be known about factory color information and put it all in one place. This will include not only the color photos you can currently see on some of the data web sites, but factory color codes, aftermarket codes, modern cross-references, interior color information, factory paint swatches, notes about period painting practices, the ability to sort by year, model, color family and much more, hopefully in an easier to comprehend display with the ability to add notes about specific colors.

If you think you can contribute to this project, drop me a line and I’ll add you to the small group who is working on this. If you have done research on a particular color or colors, own (and are willing to scan or have scanned) original factory color charts, or whatever may be your interest, we’d love to have your help, no matter which model or time period you may be interested in.

Visit the calendar page to preview (and purchase!) the 2010 Calendars.

(You know, I could cut the price in half if I could guarantee selling enough calendars to have them printed on a press, rather than using “on-demand” printing. But the quantities I would need to sell would be daunting, about ten times what I sell now. I don’t have a good feel for how many people refrain from buying a calendar because the price is just too steep. Would I gain a ten-fold jump in sales by cutting the price from $20 to $10 apiece? I have no way of knowing.)

Namely, the pay is my sincere thanks! This year there seem to be a lot of questions about why those whose cars appear in the calendar don’t get a free copy–well, here’s why…

The calendars try to accomplish a couple of things: they provide those enthusiasts who buy them with something they can hang in the garage or office featuring their favorite cars, and they raise a bit of money to help pay for things like web hosting for the various sites.

When I say a bit of money, I really mean a bit. Last year, I sold just about 100 calendars. I “profit” to the tune of $5 each; when you pay $20 for a calendar, $15 of it goes to Cafe Press. So my income from the calendars last year was about $500. (Please keep in mind this “profit” doesn’t account for the 20 hours of my time involved in producing each calendar–something I’m happy to do, as I feel like I’m giving a bit back to a supportive community. But as someone who is a professional designer, my fee would be quite a bit more than $500 for a like amount of work.)

I do appreciate every sale. Many thanks to everyone who buys a calendar!

Now, if I want a calendar for myself–for my own use or to give to others–I still have to pay Cafe Press their $15 for each calendar. (I suspect Cafe Press makes most of their money from people buying their own products.) This year I’ll be using 36 photos, and giving each owner whose car is in one of the photos a calendar would cost me over $600 (if you include the shipping costs).

The first year I did the E-Type calendar, I did just that, gave everyone a free calendar, and I just barely broke even overall, despite only giving 12 away.

If I knew I was going to sell hundreds of calendars, I could print them on a “real” printing press (rather than the print-on-demand gig we have now) and get the unit cost down considerably. But the demand just isn’t there, and I cannot afford to front several thousand dollars in the hopes that a lower price would lead to much stronger sales. It would really be a disaster (I am not a wealthy man–probably because I own a vintage Jaguar!) to be staring at boxes of unsold calendars come February of 2010.

I would like to say that the vast majority of folks who I contact about appearing in the calendar understand my dilemma, and I thank them for being gracious about it and allowing me to use their photos. And I harbor no ill will to anyone who thinks not getting a free calendar is a raw deal, I can see your point of view–if someone asked me if a photo of mine could be used in a calendar, I’d want one as well.

Believe me, I’m very sorry that I just can’t afford to do so.

See user carcrux on Twitter. Does this seem useful to anyone? It posts a “tweet” when a new car is approved, or any car gets new photos posted. I imagine there would be about 10 – 30 tweets a day.

Not sure if this is useful, please let me know. If not, it was an interesting exercise…

UPDATE: I disabled this, as the number of tweets was insane. I’ll reconsider, maybe just adding RSS to the “latest” page would be a better solution.

So it occurs to me that it would be easy enough to spit out updates of the various sites to a twitter feed. And I guess that feed could easily update a facebook “fan” page. So…

Not that many people peek in here, but would either of you find these useful? I’m a professional web developer as well as a designer, and even I cringe a bit when people spout about “web 2.0″ being the best thing since thin single-servings of bread. But if it would genuinely benefit some of you, I’m willing to give it a shot.

I suppose an alternative is to simply have RSS feeds for the “latest news” pages.

Anyway, let me know in the comments here if you’re interested in any of this. One thing I do know is that I probably wouldn’t be a great steward of a facebook fan page, the twitter updates would probably be about the only thing that would appear there.

Anyone have any objections about perhaps finding a small column of directly related adverts on the right side of the site? I’m contemplating this as a way to get this site off of this shared server and onto a dedicated box.

Then again, I have no idea if anyone would advertise (I’m thinking of marque specialists here), so it may be a moot point! If you are a potential advertiser, send me an email via the link at the bottom of the page.

I also have fixed the issue where large images would upload and then not show up in the processing page. Allocating a bit more RAM did it, though that was more complicated than expected.

Unbelievably, it’s time to start thinking about the 2010 calendars.

If you have a photo you’d like to have considered, let me know via the contact form (if the photo is already on the site), or upload it to the appropriate car and put “calendar” somewhere in the caption. Be sure to leave your email address when you upload, I cannot use photos where I cannot get in touch with the photographer (no one else can see your address, it is never exposed).

Photos should ideally be 2300 x 1800 pixels or larger, but they don’t need to be absolutely gigantic, the server will probably choke on anything over about 3000 pixels. I’d prefer raw photos that allow me to make color adjustments and do a little cropping. Vertically oriented photos generally do not work very well.

Note that this is uncompensated, unfortunately. It costs me almost retail to give calendars out, and I just don’t sell enough of them to allow me to do that. The calendars are the only fundraiser the site(s) currently do and they don’t pull in much as it is.

I’d like to do a “saloons” calendar (including XJ and XJ-S cars) but would need to be able to find a dozen good photos. A Healey calendar is a possibility but I suspect we just don’t have enough cars to make it.

I appreciate all entries, but don’t feel too put out if your photo doesn’t make the cut. I want the photos to be as great as they possibly can be.

Just as a curiousity, here are the longest contiguous car number sequences of XK and E-Types on the site.

Right-Hand Drive E-Types:

RHD Series 1 OTS: 850007 – 850038: 32 cars
RHD Series 1 FHC: 860001 – 860013: 13 cars
RHD Series 1 2+2: 1E50182 – 1E50184: 3 cars
RHD Series 1.5 OTS: 1E1887 – 1E1889: 3 cars
RHD Series 1.5 FHC: 1E21706 – 1E21709: 4 cars
RHD Series 1.5 2+2: 1E50994 – 1E50995: 2 cars
RHD Series 2 OTS: 1R1008 – 1R1010: 3 cars
RHD Series 2 FHC: 1R20912 – 1R20914: 3 cars
RHD Series 2 2+2: 1R35031 – 1R35032: 2 cars
RHD Series 3 OTS: 1S2565 – 1S2568: 4 cars
RHD Series 3 2+2: 1S51708 – 1S51711: 4 cars

Right-Hand Drive XKs:

RHD XK120 OTS: 660040 – 660045: 6 cars
RHD XK120 FHC: 669091 – 669095: 5 cars
RHD XK120 DHC: 667237 – 667244: 8 cars
RHD XK140 OTS: 800052 – 800055: 4 cars
RHD XK140 FHC: 804501 – 804504: 4 cars
RHD XK140 DHC: 807008 – 807010: 3 cars
RHD XK150 OTS: 820053 – 820056: 4 cars
RHD XK150 FHC: 824103 – 824107: 5 cars
RHD XK150 DHC: 827094 – 827097: 4 cars

Left-Hand Drive E-Types:

LHD Series 1 OTS: 875001 – 875032: 32 cars
LHD Series 1 FHC: 885001 – 885010: 10 cars
LHD Series 1 2+2: 1E77232 – 1E77235: 4 cars
LHD Series 1.5 OTS: 1E17817 – 1E17820: 4 cars
LHD Series 1.5 FHC: 1E34708 – 1E34710: 3 cars
LHD Series 1.5 2+2: 1E77946 – 1E77948: 3 cars
LHD Series 2 OTS: 1R14206 – 1R14209: 4 cars
LHD Series 2 FHC: 1R26730 – 1R26733: 4 cars
LHD Series 2 2+2: 1R43438 – 1R43443: 6 cars
LHD Series 3 OTS: 1S20049 – 1S20053: 5 cars
LHD Series 3 2+2: 1S70506 – 1S70509– 4 cars

Left-Hand Drive XKs:

LHD XK120 OTS: 670025 – 670029: 5 cars
LHD XK120 FHC: 679010 – 679012: 3 cars
LHD XK120 DHC: 677133 – 677136: 4 cars
LHD XK140 OTS: 810678 – 810680: 3 cars
LHD XK140 FHC: 814307 – 814308: 2 cars
LHD XK140 DHC: 817575 – 817578: 4 cars
LHD XK150 OTS: 831248 – 831251: 4 cars
LHD XK150 FHC: 836625 – 836628: 4 cars
LHD XK150 DHC: 837874 – 837876: 3 cars

I’ve been very busy, as usual, but I wanted to take a second to remind folks that comments left specifically about a person or business that are negative without substantiation will be deleted. This isn’t because I don’t sympathize with the person leaving the comment–we’ve all have a story or two about dealings with bad people and businesses in our old car world–but because there is no way to for an independent reader to confirm the accusation, especially if the comment is left anonymously.

The sad fact of life is that the lowest people are also the first ones to threaten with lawsuits or other tedium. The best way for you to relay the message about them would be to create your own website (a free blog, for example), and lay out the facts dispassionately and with full documentation. This can work surprisingly well.

On another note, I am desperately behind in my correspondence, so if you’ve written in the past few weeks, I will get to your email!

As you may have seen, the 2009 Calendars are now available. I encourage you to check them out and buy one if you enjoy the site. I guess with the economy in the crapper it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that sales are far slower than last year…but hopefully things will pick up.

One reason the slow sales is bothersome is that most sales then come from people whose cars are featured, which feels fairly sleazy to me–like I’m one of those guys who takes a snap of people at a tourist attraction and then tries to sell it to them. “Hey, your car is in the calendar…oh, by the way, would you like to buy one?”

“Slow” is not a euphemism; last year I sold about 150 calendars total, so to slow from that…would make them much like the “donation” button. One person per year has clicked that–seven donations in seven years. That said, I really do appreciate those who have donated, you have my undying gratitude. (I hope jag-lovers does better than this!)

According to a friend in the know, the only real way to raise funds from something other than advertising is to either

1. Have a beg-a-thon every once in awhile, or
2. Or charge something in exchange for “premiums”

The calendars are about as close to a beg-a-thon as I’m comfortable getting at the moment, and I have no idea what would constitute premium content on these sites. Mostly naked women lounging on vintage Jaguars–for a price? Throwing lots of ad screens for dubious products between every page and photo which you could remove by paying a fee? The former sounds good, but I don’t really have a stock of mostly-naked women, or working vintage Jaguars, for that matter. The latter sounds…less than ideal.