Keeping track of every Jaguar E-Type, with your help.
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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.

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