Mentioning Mercs, hmmmmm I remember one of them flying god knows how many feet up in the air and landing in some trees, it definately wasn't the drivers car, it cost loads to make, there certainly isn't many of them about, and yes i suppose it was an accident for that car to take off. But it's comparable.
I haven't seen the vid of TG driving the jag so can't really comment on it, but I'd imagine that if the cars been raced recently, then it'll have had several rebuilds including new tyres, brakes, clutches, driveshafts, suspension, regular engine rebuilds.
It also looks like this car is rather well used, I've found countless different stories on this car appearing at many events all around the globe. One interesting article that I found was this one dated 5th Feb 2001
http://www.cwn.org.uk/motoring/jaguar/2001/02/010205-stirling-moss.htm
In that article it states "Of the original 53 C-Types built, 49 still survive and many of these cars will cavalcade from Jaguar's headquarters in Coventry to Le Mans to celebrate the C-Type's first victory."
Hmmm either that particular car has a major design fault the after 50 year they all just disintegrate and disapear or there have been some rather bad drivers wrecking an awful lot of them, or theres more than 3 still left
I personally feel that the car may have been driven slightly too hard for what it was capable of at the time, maybe this was the problem, one race too many without enough attention paid to striping it all down and repairing it all, maybe it was time to have a major refit, this car certainly seems to get driven
Maybe it was the TG driver, but at the end of the day, this car is a complete piece of genius, I mean considering how old it is, it seems to have survived rather well, with a lot of hard work mind.
I definately think that no matter what this car will be back up and running, new parts will be fabbed, as they appear to have been anyway in the past, many of the original parts have been replaced. And from what I know of the classic car market a car like that aint gonna loose value because of having new parts fabbed, and i'd predict a slight increasee in car value (probably more than the cost of repairs) due to the publicity surrounding the TG show.
I think that the owner is right to ask whether the BBC will help fund repair, I haven't seen the contract written up between himself and the TG show, so I can't tell, he might have every right to ask them to repair it, who knows ?
I believe that this car has been living EyeDot's ideology of being a brilliantly engineered car well driven, and I wish I could say the same about some of the hunks of junk that are produced today, I wonder if they'll last the test of 50 years and still be driven round tracks.
Long live this car, I hope it continues to prosper and hope that the owner continues to maintain it in its working condition, and actually uses it (seen some wicked picks of it driving in the rain, I think that was at goodwood
)
Myo
