I'm surprised the Jaguar fanatics on the net haven't spoken up. I'm a
Jag fanatic wannabe, never having yet been well-healed enough to buy
one, and maybe I can shed a little Lucas-like light on the subject.
Being a serious watcher of British mystery shows on A&E and PBS, I have
long puzzled at Morse's Jag. Over the years I've watched every scene
with that car in it with a keenness only mustered by bored little boys
looking at passing traffic and 31-year-olds who used to be little boys
looking at passing traffic. I have noticed that he has an A-register
Mark II with disk wheels and a black vinyl top. On its trunk is the key
to the mystery: "2.4" in little chrome letters. (Most Mark II's here
were 3.8's or 4.2's.) In one scene we actually see Morse manually
shifting a 4-speed tranny.
The "A" on the number plates means that the car was built in late 1961
or in most of 1962 (I wish I could check an article in "Your Classic"
magazine that went into number plates in detail). The 2.4 liter model
was never exported to America (according to my late grandfather, who was
a Jag fanatic who even owned a D-type once upon a time), they had only
the 4-speed found in E-type in order to make the most of the small
engine's power, with no optional automatic. Wire wheels were preferred
by sporty romantics as being very sports-car-like, but the disk wheels
were preferred by pragmatic sporty types because of their racing
connotations (D-types and E-types and even the mid-engined XJ-13 all
used them for their strength). Even my grandpa preferred them on his
Jags. The vinyl roof? That was a factory option considered elegant at
the time. British vinyl roofs from the late Fifties and early Sixties
actually inspired the vinyl roof on the 1961 Thunderbird Landau and the
vinyl roofed variant of the Cadillac Sixty Special, the Fleetwood
Brougham, both considered the height of luxury and suaveness in the
Sixties. It is a shame that such elegant early applications led to the
excesses of vinyl we've all had to live through.
To sum up, Morse's Jag seems an entirely appropriate choice for his
character. It would be the choice of someone looking for something
esoteric, something thrifty (important for a policeman's salary) to run
and insure, something sporty (4-speed and disk wheels), something with
elegant trimmings (leather, wood, chrome, and the suave vinyl roof, as
he would remember the suaveness from his school days when he wouldn't
have had the money to buy a Jaguar yet, but would set himself on getting
one "someday"), something quiet and refined and comfortable, all for a
person without the particularly American desire for the biggest engine
and the most power, even when one can't enjoy the speeds such a big
engined, powerful car could attain because of modern speed limits.
As my knowledge of Jaguars leaves a lot to be desired, please correct me
if I'm wrong about any point, and please fill in any missing details.
Scott
Scott_Kucera_at_SYMOR-SUPPORT-2@symantec.com
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