So, my latest JLR necromancy project is under way.

1st set of photos is on arrival with nothing done to it outside of cleaning up auction lettering.




2nd is stripped down to confirm what all parts are needed - impact is exactly what I expected. Lots of expensive soft stuff in the front, but all bolt on.







And the 3rd set is for my personal pride because black wheels is the most boring trend in wheel designs, perhaps ever. Turbines, however, are great. Don't try to tell me black wheels are actually cool. You're wrong. I will fight you on this.



I enjoying saving interesting cars. The F-type in the background is a 3 pedal cabriolet that I saved last year. .

At the moment the only body styles I care about are wagons and convertibles










I know what I am doing and have done this for a very very long time. Some play with Legos, I play with the adult version. The Jags will likely continue the trend that most of my other projects do in that I explore factory cosmetic updates and bolt on stuff, but rarely performance modifications. I buy a bunch of parts cars, tinkering with what does and doesn't fit, learning as I go, selling off left over parts on ebay. I would like to get a set of XJ sport seats, or the F-type seats instead of the factory XF seats. XF seats just don't amaze for sure, but I don't find them terribly offensive for function.

It's a habit I've developed and have done for over a decade. Nothing teaches you about a car as much as taking it all apart and putting it back together.

If you want an example, check out this long term build thread on my BMW E91

 

Thank you. A beautiful woman deserves a little jewelry. I grew up in the era when black wheels meant that all you could afford was the "poverty spec" trim level. I commented about that to a salesman at a new car dealer not long ago and he said most of his customers who order black wheels say its because they think they won't show brake dust as bad. I hadn't ever thought about it before, but after he said that, I've been looking around in the parking lots and he is absolutely 100% right. Its apparently so you can drive through an automatic car wash and not have to clean any further than just the face of the wheel. I.e. its not the poor man's wheel anymore, its the lazy man's wheel.

I think the Range Rover is more the adult Lego than Jaguar.


Absolutely! If I were a dictator, all teenagers would get their first car the same way I did. Dad surprised me when I was 15 by towing home a wrecked car and saying "Son, if you can fix it, you can drive it." He didn't know it would start a lifelong hobby, but even if I'd never picked up a wrench ever again, I learn enough that I would never be scammed by an unscrupulous mechanic selling blinker fluid. After college I bought nearly a dozen wrecked Toyota Supras to either rebuild or part out. Last couple of decades I've been more into restoration of older cars. Can't say I gained a lot of technical knowledge; I still tend to need help diagnosing malfunctions on my Jaguars. People who know I tinker with cars will describe a symptom to me and ask me what I think is wrong their car and I usually just have to tell them I have no idea. Its not like I work in a shop and deal with new problems/different cars each day, 255 days a year. I've only had to diagnose maybe three to six malfunctions a year. But buying and fixing wrecks does help to learn generally how car's systems work and how to disassemble/reassemble them, especially modern cars that have such a dizzying array of plastic clips and special fasteners. If you are just dismantling a late model car to part it out and you break one while trying to figure out how it comes apart, then its not that big a deal. But for sure, rebuilding wrecked cars is a much more productive hobby than spending all weekend trying to get a tiny ball in a hole or terrorizing the local fish population.

 

I very much am in the belief that accents are the spice of life. Accent is everything! I'm very very much in agreement with you that the all black look is just laziness.

Why do you say that? I have nothing against them, I just don't have any use of a SUV in my life right now. Not necessarily any inherent reason any more than I "need" wagons as my lifestyle doesn't need the space. SUV just seems like I will be paying extra for things that at the moment mean nothing to me, like even more space and extra ground clearance. And in the negative camp any performance SUV application also comes along with baggage that is not useful with things like additional weight, fuel economy loss, performance loss, and of course the energy loss when trying to combat the physics of the previous dislikes.

 

Nice job on the F-thpe, and nice pic of the Shenandoah. Which overlook on BRP?

 

I was just thinking that if you were to build a model car out of Lego blocks, the Range Rover/Land Rover designs lend themselves more to the brick-shaped blocks than the more swoopy styling of Jaguars.

 

Thank you. And yes, this is on the parkway, don't specifically remember where, but if I remember correctly this is south of Roanoke close to Smith Mountain Lake, but it certainly could be further north closer to Big Island. I'm blessed with beautiful roads all around me for whatever kind of driving I might want. Mountains, little back roads, river runs, everything; VA is a wonderful state!

 

I meant that as a figure of speech, not that they actually had any resemblance to legos or were square. Everything in the modern JLR program is quite swoopy after all. My lego kits are just a lot more expensive than the kid's version. A few tubs worth of spare parts instead of being a couple hundred dollars is more than a few thousand. As they say, the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

 

This week I took delivery of the parts car for the stuff needed for my estate.



A very highly optioned XF S sedan in my needed color with everything I need except grill shutters and a main grill that doesn't have the adaptive cruise.



Wheels are interesting, not 100% terrible, but not amazing. I didn't buy it for the wheels so it doesn't really matter. Has new tires I could put on my F Type I suppose.


Also, same transporter also brought me an old AMG for a different project. I love the c/a209 generation. Have had one for a long long time. Great GT cabriolets if you didn't know.