Roy & I went up very early Saturday in Roy's Inca FHC, had a good journey up with just the odd shower, got there in plenty of time. Roy's auto coupe ran beautifully the whole weekend& certainly opened my eyes as to how good the auto version is.
There was patchy light rain most of Saturday, but the show was good & there was a reasonable turn out for the TRDC stand. Good to see everyone again, & meet a few new faces.
We were camping Saturday night & just after dark the rain really started. It rained all night & all day Sunday, which was such a shame as it was obvious that many people stayed away. Nevertheless we had another decent turn out of cars for the stand, some really nice examples. By 4 o'clock when it ended we were so wet & cold that we packed up the tents & drove back that evening!
Highlights were Roy winning a well deserved trophy for his car, me finding a pair of NOS blue check seat bases in the autojumble at a very reasonable price [:)], and then seeing the ACT pre production DHC!
The ACT car really was interesting. The owner had it on another stand but he was very happy for a little gaggle of us to poke around the car, & he showed us the documentation he had. Bodyshell number 9 built end of April/start of May 78 at Speke (presumably "off line"), delivered 11th May to Canley Engineering. The BMIHT certificate states Home Market RHD & confirms that it is a Pre Production car. It is still in very good condition, in it's original Flamenco Red. Early bonnet sitting over an standard engine but with the later type air filter box & a left hand side header cooling tank. Originally red check trim it now has the later blue check trim in it with a grey dash. The original steel wheels have been replaced by a set of alloys but these are the rare 77 alloys so quite possibly fitted at Canley. It is unclear if the later trim & the engine bay equipment were fitted at Canley but the current owner was told that the car had always been like this since it was sold from BL.
Sold from BL - that is a story in itself. The owner has a copy of the old V5 showing the car registered to BL at Canley & then the current V5 shows the previous owner having bought the car in February 1979 (apparently at auction). It seems this was a mistake! Think about the dates - 4 months before the DHC goes on sale in the US & over a year before the car is on sale in the UK, and there is a RHD pre production version with trim that was not yet found on production cars in the hands of a private owner in the UK! Apparently the factory contacted the new owner several times to try to buy the car back [:)]
Tony
<font size="1">1981 TR7 FHC Cavalry Blue
1980 TR7V8 DHC Jaguar Regency Red - sadly sold!
1977 TR8 FHC EFI Factory development car Inca Yellow</font id="size1">
