The Start Of It All

Been hankering after an old Jag for a number of years now since I was a boy in fact. I had been introduced to Jaguars back in the late 70's in my late teen's when one of my Dad's old work buddies came to see my parents and turned up in a Series 2 Daimler Sovereign, which I duly managed to obtain a drive of, I was smitten and promised myself one day to get one, never really thinking I would.

Time passes and even managed to obtain a place on a couple of trips by the North East Jaguar Owners Club to see the Jaguar final assembly plant and XK Engineering, around the late 80's, which rekindled my desire's

I have always been a bit of a car nut and last year was looking for a new car and decided that now's the time to go back in time and buy a classic because there wasn't any thing new I really wanted.

Decided to trawl through eBay Motors looking for some thing, didn't know what but kept looking. Got into the habit of sitting on a Sunday morning over a few months looking and watching, saw a number of possibilities which came to naught because I hadn't done any thing about getting any readies together to actually jump in and bid.

At the same time my wife was thinking about getting rid of her car a Fiat Sciencento and we colluded that I would give her my Chrysler PT Cruiser for the Fiat and I would sell the said Fiat and the monies raised would give me the where with all to buy some thing.

Eventually and before I had sold the Fiat I clapped eyes on HWV 135 X a 10 day auction on my Sunday morning trawl of eBay, made some onerous noises to my lovely wife and showed her the listing and she said you can't afford that so sat and watched a few days and in the mean time stuck a few bid's in to test the water.

Eventually bought by Andrew sight unseen from eBay August 2006 in a fit of madness, was going to view it a couple of time's in the week I was watching it, but unfortunately circumstances prevailed that prevented me doing so. I made a firm decision not to go above £1800 for the car as 'on paper' it had 10 months MOT left and can't be that bad if it's tested and the picture's look ok on eBay, and £1800 was what Practical Classics said a Series3 Jag was worth , and as the Daimler is slightly better trim thought that was what I'd stick to.

I watched the auction ending on the Saturday evening and had increased my bid to £1700 at about 30 minutes to go, bidding had been a bit on the slow side but it had steadily increased over the last few days and there where a number of watcher's.

I watched with increasing levels of stress as the clock ticked by and I was sure some one was going to snipe it off me at the last minute, so I was ready with a counter bid of £1800 to go to my max.

It never happened I sat there and sat there and the counter bid never came, the car was mine, I cried with joy...