Keeping track of every Jaguar E-Type, with your help.
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This month has been very busy, so I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to working on the various data sites. The new year should bring a couple of cool new features, namely an XJS register and hopefully the World’s Most Complete Jaguar color chart. Well, the latter is questionable, but we’ll be making a stab at it.

Happy holidays to everyone, and many thanks to those who visit and those who contribute their time and money to helping keep this site going!

We’re getting closer to passing another milestone: the 9,000th E-Type should be recorded within the next two or three months–we’re just about to add the 8,700th machine (tomorrow, perhaps?). 4,000 XKs will be a much tougher slog: We just passed 3,300 and they come in more slowly than the E-Types. And the saloons site has just started but in theory is a much larger pool of cars…in theory. Watching eBay auctions for them, it seems the majority of them are project cars, as opposed to drivers or restored beauties. I imagine their attrition rate is far higher than the sports cars. Are even 10% of them left?

This time next year I hope to see 10,000 E-Types, 4,000 XKs and 1,000 Saloons. That’s still pretty exciting.

Currently, we have 12,203 Jaguars of all types recorded.

Anyone want to see the old forums back? There are any number of other forums out there, I was thinking if I did put ours back up they’d be more about the general history of the cars or questions about historical data than technical help, as that seems pretty well covered.

I could fairly easily support several languages across these sites (comments on cars obviously would stay in whatever language the commentator uses, and this blog would remain in English) but I barely have English skills, let alone any other language. It would be a bit of work for me initially–but not the end of the world, and if it made the site more useful for more people, that’s very cool.

If you speak English and another language into which you’d like to see the site translated, drop me a line or leave a comment here (as in, you’d be willing to translate!). I’m open to all languages–except Valley Girl and L33T!

In theory, this site displays as follows.

• Exact rendering: IE7, Firefox (any version for Windows), and Safari.
  (Firefox for Mac should be in that group, too, but surprisingly it often has “issues”)
  Users of these browsers should see what I intended: The top, left and bottom nav bars are stationary while the page content scrolls behind them. (Except in this blog, where the bottom nav bar sometimes lives its own merry life at the bottom of the content instead of the bottom of the browser window.)
• Reasonable rendering: IE6
  IE6 users see the site with the top, side and bottom bars scrolling with the page content. The left nav does not continue below the depth of the initial screen.
• You-probably-cannot-read-this awful rendering: IE5.5 and below, any Netscape below version 6, any IE for Macintosh
  Sorry. Less than 1 in 200 users visit with any of these browsers, and they’re now well past their prime.
• Unknown: Opera, Konquerer and other small-market-share browsers. I suspect the latest version of Opera works, but the others, not so sure.

If you’re in the first two groups and you get unexpected results (like the bottom nav bar appearing in the middle of the page) please drop me a line with your browser and operating system. No guarantees, but I’d at least like for IE6 users to not have any issues, as that’s still the majority of you.

One sure-fire solution: use Firefox.

We now have eight E-Types that between them only have four car numbers! In all four cases, there appears to be one legitimate contender and one pretender. However, outside of a lawsuit, there’s no way to really determine the answer to the question of authenticity. And the stakes are pretty high–I have heard in many European countries (and all four cases involve cars where one is in Europe and the other is in the States) having a car with a “faked” number might lead to it being crushed, without recompense. That may even be the case here in the states.

Frankly, I didn’t think anyone would go to this extent to “legitimize” their cars…plenty of craptacular project cars exist (even today) for modest amounts of money, an easy source of a “legitimate” car number and legal paperwork.

It presents a problem for us, as in how do we present such machines on the site? I really don’t need the owner of a car we label as the “pretender” pointing their lawyer guns this way. There are practical problems as well from a data managing perspective, but they pale before the legal aspects.

I just wanted to point out a couple of things about photos of cars on the site:

1. Please feel free to add yours…even if there are existing ones already on the site from a previous owner or another enthusiast. The photos are dated, and if nothing else, you can show progress or have your much nicer photos float to the top
2. Having said that, we generally don’t remove old photos unless there is a copyright problem. This site will become more valuable over time (hopefully!) and having a photographic history of the car is a very cool thing.
3. You don’t have to be a pro to upload your photos, you can’t possibly be much worse at taking photos than I am, so the bar is set very low indeed.

If you see a car number which simply cannot be the car described, please let me know…since the numbers can easily be entered wrong (or listed wrong in an ad), it’s not a surprise a few will be inaccurate. If a number is reported as wrong, I usually discuss it with Steven, Dana and Paul to see if we can come to a consensus about it. If you’re an expert on XK numbers and would like to be involved, let me know, be happy to have some more experience on that side of things.

If someone changes the dataplate by adding incorrect information, feel free to correct it. This is somewhat like wikipedia in that regard.

Finally, as a site user, be aware that the “record changes” section simply mirrors database edits and shouldn’t be construed as necessarily reflecting changes to the car itself–though of course that can be the case, obviously.

Three things are currently in the works:

1. Owners. This used to be “Meet and Greet” but the section was cumbersome and not oft used, which is fine. The new section will be simpler, you just tell the database which cars you own, and your name will appear on the car page. If there is any dispute we will settle the matter like gentlemen: the “real” owner can send me a photo with their email address handwritten on paper next to their dataplate. I can’t imagine ever needing to do so, but stranger things have happened. This site is not meant to be an owner’s club, really, I hope we encourage participation above and beyond only those fortunate to be saddled with an elderly Jaguar…but having some sort of owner mechanism in place is nice for those people who want to use it.
2. Classifieds. This will require two things. Your car must be in the database, and you must be registered as the owner via the above mechanism. Otherwise, it will be free and open to all, dealers or private parties. (The ad itself will be copied into the history of the car.) The ads will display a photo of your choice from your uploads and a brief section of ad copy. The ad will link to your car’s page on the site so people can view more photos, see the history, etc.
3. Saloons. The database will be expanded to handle the classic post-war saloons: Mk. VII, VIII, IX; Mk. I, II, 240, 340; Mk. 10 and 420G; S-Type; and the 420. A veritable serial number stew, alas.

It will remain to be seen how soon I can get to these. I have lots of work at the moment plus some calendars to create.

Longest sequences of E-Type numbers in the database:

Series 1

• Right-Hand Drive
  OTS: 850001 - 850031 (31)
  FHC: 860001 - 860013 (13)
  2+2: 1E50035 - 1E50036 (2)
• Left-Hand Drive
  OTS: 875001 - 875032 (32)
  FHC: 885001 - 885010 (10)
  2+2: 1E77232 - 1E77235 (4)

Series 1.5

• Right-Hand Drive
  OTS: 1E1893 - 1E1894 (2)
  FHC: 1E21708 - 1E21709 (2)
  2+2: 1E51106 - 1E51107 (2)
• Left-Hand Drive
  OTS: 1E16178 - 1E16180 (3)
  FHC: 1E35393 - 1E35395 (3)
  2+2: 1E77695 - 1E77697 (3)

Series 2

• Right-Hand Drive
  OTS: 1R1008 - 1R1010 (3)
  FHC: 1R20912 - 1R20914 (3)
  2+2: 1R35031 - 1R35032 (2)
• Left-Hand Drive
  OTS: 1R8596 - 1R8599 (4)
  FHC: 1R28216 - 1R28219 (4)
  2+2: 1R43732 - 1R43735 (4)

Series 3

• Right-Hand Drive
  OTS: 1S1200 - 1S1202 (3)
  2+2: 1S51708 - 1S51711 (4)
• Left-Hand Drive
  OTS: 1S20003 - 1S20006 (4)
  2+2: 1S70506 - 1S70509 (4)