In 1968 I found myself having lunch in the Roma Restaurant in São Paulo Brazil. It's still there and if you want one of the best Italian meals of your life they'll be happy to serve you. At the time I was a bachelor earning a decent salary and had just had a wonderful lunch on a beautiful sunny day. Just as I was thinking that life could not be better a rather unprepossessing chap came to sit at the next table, flanked by two beautiful women who were clearly not his daughters.
Moral of the story: however good you think you have it, there's always someone who's got more. This came back to me recently on the wonderful holiday Rejane and I have just had touring in England and Scotland. Last year I bought a second-hand camper van which has turned out to be the ideal vehicle for two people to travel around and live in.
We visited Winston Churchill's home at Chartwell in Kent on a beautiful summer's day and enjoyed the magnificent view over the Weald of Kent (a geographical term I had read in books but never actually seen) and drifted back to Wales through the Cotswolds, pausing to enjoy some of the impossibly beautiful small towns in that region. Then we set off to the North.
On the way of course we had to visit Stratford-upon-Avon and for the first time I did the tourist thing I have always avoided: visiting Anne Hathaway's cottage. I liked the way they have kept the garden in something like the way it would have been in the 16th and 17th centuries. And so onward to the Lake District, where again we did the tourist thing and visited Wordsworth's home at Grasmere. Once again, you can see why the place is popular with tourists: the house and gardens seem to be almost exactly as Wordsworth left them.
Then on up the road to Scotland, drawing a veil over Carlisle, a drab and windy place where they have built a castle out of the most unattractive red stone. Nevertheless, we were having a marvellous time, either eating in the van or finding good food in restaurants while still, after 16 years of companionship, finding new things to talk and to laugh about on the way, including competing to see who could spot the greatest number of Eddie Stobart lorries rather like a couple of pre-adolescents told by their parents to amuse themselves for long trip.
Finally we arrived at the Scottish border. The weather was beautiful. The camper was running well and providing for our needs. Rejane was her beautiful, brilliant and witty self and all was well with my world. Then came that Roma moment.
It growled quietly into place alongside us. It remained there, long slim and totally beautiful. Voted by one British newspaper as the most beautiful sports car of all time (a comment repeated by Enzo Ferrari no less) and celebrating its 50th anniversary, yes it was a perfectly restored and maintained E-type Jaguar. The owner was about my age but with a bit more weight around his middle. His wife was a pleasant-looking lady but hardly as beautiful as Rejane. The vehicle could not be slept in or cooked in as we can do in our camper and in comparison to the most modest domestic saloon today, its mechanics are rather primitive. Nevertheless I found myself standing next to one of the most perfect pieces of design that has ever been produced.
One of the criteria of good design is that the object should do precisely what it is intended to do and the E-type does exactly that: it transports a man and his female companion (created in pre-politically correct times, it can only be driven by heterosexual males) from A to B with the maximum possible style. That style was its secondary purpose, one so typical of the 1960s and for those who were not around at the time, it is difficult to realise what a unique vehicle this was. The revolutionary motoring icon we usually associate with the 1960s is the Mini and with its transverse engine and front-wheel drive it is technically more advanced than the Jaguar, but its boxy body was not too far removed from other boxy cars of the time. The E-type looked like nothing else on the road and unlike most vehicles on the racetrack. Looming silkily out of that drab era that was only a teenager's lifespan away from World War II, rationing and bombsites, this beast blew your socks off – and still does.
At the time of its appearance a lot of nonsense was talked and written about its so-called Freudian significance – the phallic symbol of that elongated bonnet. Piffle. The bonnet was long and low and curved because it had to perform two functions: contain a bloody great engine with its attendant pipes and wires and ancillary structures, and also because its designer Malcolm Sayer sought the best aerodynamic shape for it.
And we do have to give credit to the boss of Jaguar, Sir William Lyons, who approved the project. This is one of the few advantages of the limited size of most British motor car companies at the time – that one individual could come up with a design and another give his approval – the disadvantage was that these firms were too small to invest in research and were swallowed up by larger conglomerates. It is difficult to see the ranks of bean counters in a large company like Ford, for example, giving the go-ahead to this futuristic vehicle. Paradoxically, of course, it did turn out to be an exceptionally good business venture for Jaguar as its combination of appearance, performance and reasonable price found a market among young men who were beginning to make money in the false dawn the British economy enjoyed at that time.
And so there I stood in the sun and wind at a parking place on the border between England and Scotland being given a choice of values: the homely, practical camper with its abundance of domestic happiness, or the seductive charms of the most beautiful car of all time. Well, reader, I married my choice and I'm happy with it (but there was a moment there).
No comments:
Post a Comment