TOO HOT TO RUN
I first met Thomas Rantzow in Sarasota, Florida, in 1988. I was buying a 1973 Jaguar V12 E-Type. It was automatic; in fact, that’s all they sold in the U.S. Anyway, Thomas had built this one up himself. It was silver with cherry-red upholstery, with stunningly lowered suspension and huge fat tires. It was also an accident waiting to happen. E-Types didn’t like it much when you turned on your headlights, air con, windscreen wipers, and radio at the same time, and would basically call it quits. Why? Lucas electrics, England’s finest. In America, Lucas was called the “Prince of Darkness.” It was the auto union of electrics.
But that was by the by. The XKE, as Americans call them, was gorgeous, and I was driving this beautiful penis extension down to Fort Myers, where I lived at the time. I didn’t even make it to the interstate before some strange, banging noises came from under the hood. I phoned the garage and they sent out Thomas. They sent Thomas out so many times after that that we became friends, and Thomas, as you know, became our race-team chief.
I loved to drive that E-Type, when it wasn’t broken, or pretending to be broken. It was alive, I’m sure. It was a pouting, spoiled brat of a car.
Phone call to Thomas: “Hey, mate, the Jag won’t start.”
Thomas: “Are you sure? Don’t give it too much gas.”
Brian: “Thomas, I just turned the friggin’ key, and it wouldn’t start.”
Thomas: “Okay, I’ll be right over.”
Thomas would come, sit in it, turn the key once, and it would leap to life. Sometimes I would get so upset I would swear at it and say stuff like “Lada,” “Polski Fiat,” “Yugo,” just to piss it off. The pick of the litter in E-Types was certainly the straight 6, early sixties model. What a shape! And who can forget three of them getting chucked over a cliff in The Italian Job? That brought a tear to a generation’s eyes. If you owned an E-Type, you couldn’t really say to someone, “I’ll be there at seven,” because you’d never make it. The trouble with E-Types was they just couldn’t be bothered to putz around city streets, it made them overheat something terrible. Believe me, I went through three radiators.
My brother-in-law, Dr. Arild Jacobson, loved the E-Type, and visits us every year from Norway. He’d asked me for years about buying it. I finally relented in 2005. He shipped it to Norway, where, he says, it runs like a dream, because “it’s cold there.” So that was the problem! It was too hot where I lived in Florida. Simple, eh?
The next time we visited Arild and family was summer 2006, up in their mountain home in Beitostølen, and I had missed the Jag more than I cared to admit. Arild asked me if I would like to drive it down to the town. I said yes please, and as I drove down those beautiful mountain roads, I suddenly got it. The orgasmic exhaust noise, the long, sexy hood (penis extension), the not-very-good brakes (penis retraction and “pucker factor” on mountain roads). It seemed to be saying to me, “I told you, dickhead, it was too bloody hot.” Then, when we arrived at the town center, I parked, and the radiator hissed, farted slightly, and took a huge dump, gallons of water pouring from out of the thing.
Arild smiled and said, “I think it’s too hot today!”