When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
This was my third trip to the Laguna Seca vintage races and car week, camping with my brother just above Turn 5 in his pair of Eurovan Westys (2023, 2021). With us were a group of his Bay Area rally friends, and this time accompanied by my old racing buddy, Bob, the lead and chief Jag guru of the Mighty Roar Jaguar vintage racing team with which we had so much fun with back before the turn of the century. As a plus, this year our camp was classed up with some interesting and engaging new friends who joined us with their pretty yellow Pantera.
The drive south down the coast from SF on Route 1 is a beautiful and fun journey. Since we were VW bus owners, we kept an eye out and many nice old buses were spotted in their natural habitat as we rolled by the many scenic beaches and into Santa Cruz. Coming into Monterey, the first stop is at the Costco in Seaside to overbuy all the provisions we’ll need for the week.
Once we had camp set up, the initial day was a drive further south along the California coast towards Big Sur. As always, Bixby Bridge is a highlight.
On the way back from Big Sur, we hit our first event, the Little Car Show in Pacific Grove, a fun open car show just for vehicles with displacements below 1601cc.
The Tour d’Elegance
For us, Thursday may be the biggest day of the weekend.
The first official event of the week is perhaps our favorite event, the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, where competitors in Sunday’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance can gain extra show points by completing a driving tour south down the coast from Carmel. We set out early and positioned ourselves along the roadside at Monastery Beach to secure a good spot and soon classics began rolling by in front of us.
Since Hwy 1 is an open road, often groups of other interesting cars jump in to join the fun. Before the official tour started, a brace of supers came ripping and snarling down the road, showing off for the crowd with explosive exhausts and amazing bursts of acceleration.
But the tour is largely old classic and performance cars,
Somehow, my camera always seems to find the Jaguars.
With century old iron, there were the inevitable tows-of-shame.
Paddock walk
Back at the racetrack for qualifying day, Bob and I walked the Paddock to see who was there this year.
The Germans were out in force,
As were the Italians,
And the Americans,
Of course, the Brits,
This year featured a historical series of Formula 1 cars,
And some amazing old-timers.
It is always nice to come across a racing example of a model that you personally owned in the past.
But we are here for the races. Unfortunately, the high-end camera was left home and my phone preferred to focus everywhere but the racecars, so I only have a few action shots, including one from turn 5, looking up to our campsite just above the track.
Camp walk
Back from the track, a camp walk is always a good way to stretch the legs, talk with old friends & other bus owners, and take in the spectacular views.
The camping areas around the track are extensive & hilly and climbing higher in the hot sunshine was thirsty work.
At Turn 6, just before the Corkscrew, I came upon this beautiful sight…
Thank you, kind Turn6Beer friends, you made my day with this delicious ice-cold IPA as I completed my walk and slowly moseyed back down to our campsite.
Baja Cantina
Finally, the day wraps up with the informal car show and dinner at the Baja Cantina, with all kinds of classics…
Concours de’Lemons
Later in the week, the crazy Concours de’Lemons is always crowded and eye-opening.
Even the Lemons parking lot was full of gems.
The Auctions
The Monterey Car Week auctions never fail to be interesting and one of our camp mates had a set of passes to the Mecum auction that we put to good use. There were all kinds of nice cars at the auction.
And some weird ones, like this wide-body V8 splitty, could be found, too
The star of the show was the ‘62 Ferrari 250 GTO with an estimated $70M hammer price when it goes on the block next winter. A car requiring a body guard was a first for me.
Jaguar Open Studio disaster
Weeks earlier, I had RSVP’d for Jaguar’s Open Studio on Saturday evening, where Jaguar would be highlighting the new platform they are betting the company’s future on. Jaguar’s marketing/comms team had gone all out to make it an elegant evening event in downtown Monterey, with a closed guest list, high privacy walls, bouncers & gate guards at the door, and an outside display featuring the actual MOMA E-type, a black XJS convertible, and a XJ220 from a local museum to provide historical context for the evening.
Even with a shower, shave, clean chinos and our least-dirty polo shirts, we were a bit out of our element as we fought our way through the loud glittering crowd of polished evening wear, PIBs (People In Black), models, dandies, influencers, and photographers to the hors d'oeuvres and cocktails inside. Since I was our driver for the evening, it would be a purple NA cocktail for me, thanks!
As we ventured further inside to see the new T00, a squad of Young Ladies In Black swooped in on us with their radiant smiles, perfect hair, and survey tablets to make their pitches touting the many advancements of the new design; 1000hp! Zero emissions! No back window! Debuting in late 2026! and recorded our Jaguar bonafides, including Bob’s half century of Jag ownership racing, restoration, concours judging & winning.
When we arrived at the display, there was a moment of quiet as we tuned out the thumping club music, looked past the strutting gold-gowned automotive model who was blocking our view, put down our cocktails, and slowly took in the magnificence of the new Jaguar.
We found ourselves as one, astonished, gobsmacked, and stunned into silence.
After being immersed in the Jaguar restoration and vintage racing world for so many years and spending the past several days surrounded by the world’s most spectacular performance and classic cars, we found absolutely nothing here to like. Absolutely Nothing.
As we continued to stare at it dumbfounded, two dull splashes could be heard in the background as the HMS Curmudgeon and the HMS Sourpuss dropped anchor solidly in the harbor. Collectively we perceived a disaster of such magnitude sitting here in front of us that we couldn’t afford to be even slightly polite about it. If this is the future, our beloved Jaguar brand would soon be dead dead dead.
I have to credit the YLIBs for staying in and not punching out for an exit once we collected ourselves and began making our horrified feelings crystal clear to them about the T00’s brutal and inelegant body shape being a huge slap in the face to Jaguar’s glorious heritage of matching beautiful flowing designs with high-performance engines and drivetrains, expressed our dismay at the completely tone-deaf creative choices that had been made here, snidely joked that the Crossfire just called and wants its rear end back, while voicing our extremely grave concerns for the future of the company,
The crestfallen YLIBs did perk up when the one actual pro designer in our group diplomatically called it “A Very Bold and Innovative Design!” After we bolted out of there, he said, “Yeah, I thought it sucked too, but I needed to throw them something positive to counter that black hole of negativity you two crank-bags were generating back there.”
Clearly we were not the target demographic for this vehicle and it was a very quiet and introspective drive back to the track and the safety of our familiar vintage race cocoon with its swoopy fenders, finicky carbs, roaring engines, large steering wheels, and delicately gauged instruments.
That night we had stared into the future and the future is not good.
The next morning we struck camp, loaded up the vans, headed back up the coast, and dispersed to our various homes around the country.
If you like classic and performance cars, I can’t recommend coming out to Monterey Car Week enough. We only saw a fraction of the official and unofficial events occurring that week and we came away so impressed by everything we saw. Well, almost everything...
It was a beautiful crisp fall weekend morning drive through the Indiana countryside.
I was headed just downriver to Attica to pick up some Jag parts from an XK8 that was being broken locally, which is a very rare occurrence here. It's even rarer to have it be a color match to mine.
Before: I think I like the early, deeply inset, front bumper sidelights better than the stock, conformal, side lights I currently have. Having a spare bumper cover will let me play around to see if I like that look on my XKR.
Who knows, since it's an experiment I might ever get creative and cut in a set of XKR-S top nose intakes, which I also like the look of.
The front bumper cover fit in the back of the van with ease. Coming back, the harvest is just getting started.
And I took the slow scenic route back that wound back and forth over the Wabash River, stopping along the way to buy some cold apple cider because Fall.
I came out of this evening's research technology commercialization event to find a very pretty cat parked next to mine.
This is an _extremely_ rare occurence in central Indiana.
Quite striking, yes, but I find that I still greatly prefer the XKR's more classic and curvalicous lines, thanks.
Last edited by sanchius; Oct 14, 2025 at 05:57 PM.
BLUF: Renewing expired anti-roll bar bushings and end links fixed a very noisy and loose sounding suspension.
Over the past few months, the suspension on my XKR has been sounding increasingly noisy and rattly. It didn't feel loose, the front upper strut mounts looked fine, and I wasn't seeing unusual tire wear. But it sounded just awful, with a loud resonating rattle that made it sound like the front end was going to fall off whenever I hit a pothole.
I began researching new suspension bushings and what the latest thinking was on the best upper front strut mounts in preparation for taking the car off the road and ripping the entire suspension apart to renew everything. I've done this on other vehicles before, if I was going to do this, I'd be renewing all the bushings in one shot.
I was taking care of some other maintenance items and found myself deep in the intake side of the engine, with the air filter box off, renewing the alternator.
I happened to grab the anti-roll bar that runs under there and it was extremely loose. Could it just be expired anti-roll bar bushings and end links that are the problem? These would be easy to renew without taking the whole suspension apart. I got online and ordered 24MM front & 17mm rear anti-roll bar bushings and end links that totaled about $100.
The red rear bushings and end links were dead simple and jumped right in. As an experiment, I upgraded to aftermarket greaseable 17mm prothane bushings and brackets, designed for Subarus. They fit perfect.
The front endlinks and the right-side bushing were trivial to do as well.
The front bushing on the coolant reservoir side was another matter. Access was so tight that, while removing the silver front bracket bolt (yellow arrow) would be easy, I knew it would be next to impossible to fit it back on straight with the new bushing in place..
Our go-to move when working on the front ends of the SIII XJ6's and MkIIs we used to drive and race was "Drop the front subframe." If I was going to do that and be underneath the vehicle, I wanted a second line of protection in addition to the floor jack. So I disconnected the bonnet gas struts, place & bolted the bonnet in service position, then fitted the stout red engine support bar and hung a 4' LED shop light off the top of the bonnet to illuminate the work area.
I next loosened, but didn't totally remove, the rearward front subframe bolt on that side (yellow arrow).
Then I also loosened, but didn't totally remove, the frontmost left subframe bolt (green arrow) and carefully lowered the left side of the engine & subframe assembly a bit with both the floor jack and engine support bar until I could easily access the front bolt of the bushing bracket (yellow arrow) to fit it back on straight without crossthreading it.
As they say, reassembly is the reverse of disassemble. Because I didn't totally remove the two left subframe bolts, I didn't need to wrestle with the subframe and engine to realign them to their original position.
Once reassembled and back on the road, I was very pleased.
All the noises and rattles were gone and it felt like I was once again driving a tight sports car again instead of a falling-apart jalopy
1) Several people posted in the dedicated bushing renewal thread that they were able to reattach the front left bushing bracket without lowering the subframe, so the job may be much simpler than shown here.
2) Hey, Lanny, great to hear from you! That XK8 was a big departure from all your other classic rods. Are you planning on replacing the XK8 with anything interesting and well matched to all those wonderful twisty roads in your region?
Naw, it's not difficult at all if you have the premium Alpine system. You just have to be tenacious.
Note: The following instructions only apply to 2000-06 XK (X100) and 2000-03 XJ (X308) with Alpine premium audio system only. Not applicable to Harman Kardon amplified system.
The key is that the Jag line-level speaker harness plug is connected to the stock amp in the boot, not in the center console in front at the head unit where they are normally found on most other cars. So you have to run new line-out speaker signal wires from the head unit in front to the boot (hence the #3 25' 7-wire harness below) to connect the head unit line-level outs to the stock line-level plug for the stock speaker harness in the boot. At this point, it might be just as easy & way cheaper to just run individual line-out wires from the new head unit to the individual speakers. But I didn't want to do that, I wanted to use the stock jag stereo wire harness.
I was able to ditch the stock head unit, amp, and CD changer and install an modern single-din aftermarket BT touch-screen stereo at home without chopping up the stock jag stereo harness using these:
Note: If you are doing this install on an 2000-2003 XJ X308 sedan, you will need to run an 8-wire harness from the head unit to the boot to feed the rear door midbass speakers that the X100 doesn't have.
I recall doing the following:
I removed the stock head unit & rear amp+cdplayer stack.
cut the 25' 7-wire harness in half and ran a 2x7 harness from the head unit area to where the amp+cdplayer stack used to be in the boot. This will carry the six line-level speaker signals from the head unit to the Jag speaker harness plug located in the boot and leave two empty wires for things like remote subwoofer amp power on/off signal.
In front: install the new head unit using the yellow and small white plugs from aih-jag2p to bring power to the head unit.
In front: hooked one #2 aih-jagrca connector from the head-unit rca subout to the stock jag AI-NET data cable. The remote sub-amp on/off signal goes though this as well.
in front: connected the head unit speaker line outs to the 14 wires in the 2x7-wire harness
In boot: hooked the other #2 aih-jagrca connector from the stock jag AI-NET data cable in back for when I install an aftermarket amp & sub this summer.
in boot: connected the 14 line-level wires to the remaining arh-jag2p large white connector that plugs into the jag stereo wire harness.
It's been awhile and I may be missing a step or two. I had limited time, so I didn't bother to figure out how to hook up the steering wheel stereo controls. The little leaper is from an XJ40 dash.
I am very happy with the result and it'll be even better once I add a real sub & amp.
Below is the excellent arh-jagd2p install guidance document from Discount Car Stereo: www.discountcarstereo.com/pdf/arh-jag2p.pdf
I added the final RCA connector image at the end from my files, but I don't have the original link. It includes the blue sub amp remote on/off wire, so I didn't have to run that signal through my 7-wire harness.
I found Discount Car Stereo products and support to be excellent and highly recommend them.
If I was to do it again and had more time, I would:
Use a single din touchscreen stereo with an easy-to-feel-without-looking rotary volume knob instead of small hard-to-find up/down volume buttons.
Figure out how to connect the steering wheel controls for the head unit volume
Some helpful instructions from DiscountStereo: I'm assuming your 2001 XKR has a premium audio system, otherwise the ARH-JAG2P (as described), is not applicable/required. If Premium; the aftermarket radio speaker outputs are NOT required -- Please note they are no speaker wire outputs on the factory premium system radio. Audio information from factory radio is sent to amplifier via the AI-NET plug found behind the radio cavity and routed to the back where it connects to the factory amplifier.
The ARH-JAG2P assumes you are replacing the factory radio and factory amplifier in Alpine premium system and the 18-pin connector (with wires), plugs into the 18-pin plug currently connected to the factory amplifier and also connects to the speaker outputs on the aftermarket amplifier; however, if NOT installing an aftermarket amp; you will need to run speaker wires from new radio to said 18-pin connector (with wires) in trunk-- doing so allows the new replacement radio to power the speakers directly.
Last edited by sanchius; Mar 13, 2026 at 07:39 AM.
