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-   -   Post-war Jaguars in India (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/post-war/44960-post-war-jaguars-india-5.html)

Same Jag featured in this wonderful travelogue from the north east:

This car might be 1946 based on the type of headlights. Later models had the Lucas P 80 headlights.

True that - they were fragile & temperamental (character!)! And in the hurly-burly of the US street scene, this particular lot did not win a large following.
Rather like Colin Chapman's "knitting needle" half-shafts in the early Lotus-es, which won a lot of accolades for "character, style & handling" but more brickbats for their unreliability:D - Forgive the OT!

The tag line for Jaguar was "Space, Pace and Grace". No claims were made for reliability :eek:

So guess we got to live with it.

Yes, indeed - and its no pain let me assure you:) Jaguars have set many bench-marks along the way too, including the one for the least expensive mainstream sports car to have 100 mph cruising capability (the XK120 in 1948). It was only in the late sixties & seventies (when Britain came under the Labour Party & consequent militant unionism) that Jaguars reputation started nose-diving.

British Leyland also had a monopoly (almost, save a few mom-and-pop manufacturers) in the British market. Didn't believe they could do anything wrong, while the "Land of the Rising Sun" was rising in their own back yard and the global automotive space.

And sadly, most existing "British" manufacturers and factories are now foreign owned. Maybe that at least ensured their survival.

Did you forget the SS100 with a claimed three-digit top speed ? Well not maybe "cruising".

I did have a 2005 X-Type, that did just fine. But it was just a sexy Mondeo.

Well now, the SS100....Aah! How could one forget - as near automotive Nirvana for its time as any that one could think of! Right in the middle of that genre in the 30's - long bonnets, short tails & wind in the hair - and costing a fraction of the contemporary Astons & Invictas to boot!

And I was disappointed to read that the X-type was just a sexy Mondeo - how the mighty have fallen!:D

Somewhat OT now - mods, is that OK? - I come from stolid middle-class stock - the nearest I came to an exotic was as a school-boy in the late 60's. When I & our gang of perpetrators would bunk school to land up at the British Council library in Hazratganj, Lucknow (above the now defunct Mayfair cinema), knowing the exact date when the weekly Illustrated London News (also now defunct) with its splendid motoring centre-spread, would be put up on the racks. I must confess that my crowning achievement was surreptitiously cutting out the Maserati Ghibli centre-spread - the original Giugiaro classic of '67, not the unfortunate current iteration masquerading under the same name! - while the rest of the gang kept a careful look-out!

The sad bit, as you pointed out, is the absence of originality today - with little idea of who the actual parents are. At least the name survives!

Not quite "post-war". Kolkatta Statesman Rally, 2013

If that's you holding the reins, Travancore, all I can say is : Lucky ---! And that too in the "automotive nirvana" and in my favourite city!:D

Unfortunately, I have nothing to do with that lovely SS in Kolkata! Wish I did.

Dilip and Shobhaa De. Is that registration real ?

Yes, mid 1980s, Bombay. The car survives.

This piece appeared in the papers the other day showing the late Shahi Kapoor leaning against a Series 1 or 2 Jag E Type. Is there any way to judge whether the picture was taken in India? And whether the car is known?

I was wondering the same when I saw the pic. Could it be the one from the movie Trishul?


http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/vintag...ml#post2854702

The garage could indeed pass for India.
Unfortunately, I was never on the Kapoors' Christmas Luncheon invite list to know exactly where.