After the false start of the JEC annual gathering being unable to be held in May, the JEC joined forces with other Jaguar Clubs for the one day only Jaguar Festival at Bicester Heritage on 4th July, and what a day it was! Despite a dodgy weather forecast, and the impossibility of organising such an event in an impossibly short timescale, plus the unusual situation of co-ordinating the event with other Jaguar owners clubs (E-Type Register and JDC amongst others), somehow the organising committee pulled it off! Hats off to them!
It was an early start, Nigel and I leaving Matlock at 7.20 a.m., arriving Bicester less than 2 hours later. We passed Phil on the M1 on the way down, but somehow he managed to catch us up as we turned off the A43 and took to the A421 to avoid the dreaded Bicester Ring Road, which was awash with Jaguars fully 45 minutes before the scheduled opening time.
For some reason that will remain unsolved, my parking pass was labelled ‘Disabled’ rather than for any specific parking zone. Not bothering to burden the office with questions at a critical time, I decided to run with it and see where it took us. The site plan issued with the entry ticket didn’t show where disabled parking was, but it turned out to be on hardstanding just after the site entrance. As we got out of the car we could see Phil crawling round the long perimeter road in the crocodile heading to goodness -knows-what parking zone. On the plus side, the disabled parking was adjacent to the food court, so breakfast was duly consumed!
On starting to explore, we couldn’t see where each section had parked up. We had abandoned erecting the Derbyshire region flag, collected from Barrie the previous week, partly because disabled parking was on hardstanding, and also because there was no established meeting point for each region. Ian (Bamford) had given up hope of establishing a ‘Base’, so the flag remained in the car!
I don’t know what the attendance was, but Jaguars stretched as far as the eye could see, in almost every direction! Some Sections had managed to arrange group parking. The E Types were one notable group, and Jim Mann had done a sterling job of corralling the modern XK’s (mine excepted, still in ‘Disabled Parking’). I know there is a saying that ‘you can have too much of a good thing’, but both Nigel and I suffered from our eyes glazing over when confronted with the sheer quantity of the E-Types and the modern XK’s, so we moved on to the less structured parking. We were impressed by the Mk 10 convertible which looked superb. There were also some other interesting non-standard soft tops (see pics).
We also spent some time around the suppliers stalls, some in the big hangar and some outside. Nigel bought 2 car covers from Hamilton Classic (one for the XK, one for the 911) in matching red (the covers, not the cars in red!). We also spent some time talking to ElectroGenic who had brought along their electric converted E Type. We are still not convinced about the Range issues, or in fact the cost of conversion (£80k on top of the cost of the E Type, since you ask!). It was also good to have a quick word with Cathy from the JEC office. The JEC merchandise stall looked a bit sparse, but Cathy explained that sales had been strong in the morning and they had sold lots, which is very good news.
We had seen all we wanted to see by just after 2 pm, so we decided to depart, grateful that the poor weather had not materialised (it may have done later, we drove through some horrendous weather on the way back up the M1 and back into Matlock).
It was a good day and well done to all involved. Also it reminded us of what we had been missing over the last 18 months, and we look forward to more events going forward. The joining up of several Jaguar clubs also seemed to work well and perhaps some more of the same will be forthcoming going forward.
