Restoration of the 1938 Jaguar

The East is unique… Doing business in the East is unpredictable…

The history of the restoration of the 1938 Jaguar was told to us by Rafi Hershkovich 25 years after the events took place. We listened as if enchanted. The history of the restoration of this Jaguar unfolded before us as if it all took place only yesterday…

"I’ve been interested in steel since I was small. In Russia, I restored automobiles by ‘bits and pieces’ – when someone needed a door straightened or fixed, or when the neighbours asked to repair a damaged panel or other such thing. While in Leningrad, I helped out in several different garages. Those were my student days. Here, in Israel, the hobby turned into something much, much bigger…"

"A 1.5 Jaguar was repaired by us starting in 1979 and up until 1982. This was a time when we had already restored several automobiles. There were the Buggy, the Triumph, the Lanca, all open sports automobiles."

' This story had a very interesting beginning. A collector came to visit me. He offered me an invitation: “Come with me. I want to show you a car. Perhaps you will like it. If you don’t like it, then I’ll take it. But you will have to help me to restore it." We drove to a garage. And a terrible sight met us. It was as if we were in a chicken coop. Everything was dirty; filthy, actually. The car’s parts were draped and covered with old, ripped, oily clothes, or perhaps simply with some soiled and discarded rags.

And among all these clothes peeked out fragments of what seemed to be automobile parts."

"Amongst all this stood the frame of a Jaguar. When I looked at the frightful thing, I thought to myself, "All right, we’ll take this thing, and perhaps add to the family of classic automobiles. But the work to be done!” First of all, the nickel parts were missing – the grate, the headlight. Second of all, everything was rusted… And here, the companion that brought me to this place tells me that the owner does not want to sell this car, or wants a lot of money for the car, but that he would speak with the man and try to get the price down. All right, we went to speak with the owner of the Jaguar…"

"We arrived. We parked our car beside the building on the sidewalk. We went up to see the owner and to sit down and speak with him about the sale of the car. The two men began to argue about the price of the car. The sum was about two and a half thousand dollars. At first, I listened. Then, I started talking: 
"Why are you haggling? Do you want to take the car?"
"No."
"And, do you want to sell the car?"
"I don’t know yet. We’ll see. I’m not sure yet. It’s hard to sell these things. It’s like ripping your heart apart."

And suddenly someone started to yell from downstairs:
"Who parked the car here? The police is here ticketing it."
This was in Tel Aviv. The fines are very high. My companion ran down to the car. I started talking to the owner of the Jaguar:
"Tell me straight. What do you want? I don’t have a large sum of money. I’m not going to haggle with you. If you need my help, I can restore whatever you could want, in exchange."
"You are a mechanic?"
"Yes, I have a good garage. Look, I’m not going to haggle. Here is five hundred dollars – and the car is mine."
"No… But I have two carburetors. No-one can restore them."
"Here is five hundred dollars, I will restore your carburetors and I will also help you in the future."
"I have a Mercedes, and I will need to go to England for parts."
"We’ll go together."
He put the money into his pocket.
My companion returns from downstairs and begins the conversation anew. He says:
"I will not take the car for this money."
I ask him:
"So you won’t take the car for this money?"

"No, I won’t take it."
"And if I do a job for him, and take the car for myself? Will that be ok with you?"
"If you want to take the car for yourself – take it. I’m not going to take it for the sum of money he’s talking about."
"Well, ok, I’ve taken the car."
He became pale, his eyes started shining. We were talking about two and a half thousand dollars. I said to him:
"I’m not going to lie to you. I’m going to do a job for him which costs more than two and a half thousand dollars. I don’t want you to be upset with me."
"No problem. Take the car. I’m not going to take it. I have another car I have my eye on."
"Well, all right. Where are the nickel parts?" I ask the owner of the Jaguar.
"I have them at home," he says.
"Then let’s go get them."
I immediately took the nickel parts. The grate, the handles, everything that could be found. This is because, metal, I can make. Nickel parts – impossible.

In about an hour, I had everything at home. Then, the car was delivered.

And little by little, we started to assemble the car… For four years…

When the car was delivered, it was an atrocity. It’s frightful to think what the car was like at the beginning of the restoration. It was a tin can. The problem was that everything had rusted. Completely rusted throughout. What was left was only the chassis and the grate of the front radiator. It was impossible to restore part of the cabin. Restoration was also difficult because many of the original parts were unavailable. The bridges were rusted. I had the feeling that this was an impossible job to complete and to begin to restore this Jaguar was a little frightening …

We wanted the car to be authentic. Many things took a lot of time and effort and many decisions had to be made. At the same time I had to struggle with myself. How to make the car look exactly like the original model? I worked from photos. The books came later. There was the fear that some parts would not be found. The worries that came with this restoration! I was so deeply immersed in this car… but it was all very interesting.

Problems occurred at every step of the restoration. Everything was so rusted, and the parts were not original parts. It was impossible to move forward in the restoration. We didn’t know how to build the door. Everything was disfigured. If you started to weld – the car will be destroyed. You had to know, where to start to clear and sand the car, and in which direction to sand. How to put together disfigured parts and to repair them, without doing more damage to the automobile?

The car was restored from the top. There was the danger to warp the car. The car was suspended. Diagonals were made, because the doors were rusted on the bottom. At some point, someone had already restored this car, but to base our work on their numbers was impossible. What did we do? We cleaned the car with a sandblaster, and rebuilt if from the top, down. We spliced what was rusted, what was missing. That’s the reason that both the right and left side came out the same.

The decision to build the car from the top, down, was an excellent one, to work on the car while it was suspended in the air. If the Peugeot 203 was built from the side, this car was built from the top, down. What can be said? The work, at times, continued without stop, without rest, without holidays. Working after the regular work was completed in the garage was the most pleasant, without disturbances, productive. The restoration team was international – Portuguese, Arab, Turkish specialists worked on the car.

We lacked many parts. I finally went to England, to a huge market of antique car motorists, where thousands of people gather with a huge amounts of automobile parts. I very much needed certain parts, original parts, which I felt, I could get here. I met a man and asked him:
"Tell me, please, this is from a Jaguar?"
"No… I don’t know. This is everything that I have. Take a look yourself."
"Let’s take a look. I have a distance that I need here between …"
"I have no idea. I just came to sell this."
"Let me measure it."
"Suit yourself!"
I began to measure, and felt, that this is something….native. The same dimensions that I needed…It would sit just so…It was so close to the part that I so sorely needed… To be able to visually identify a part like this was so rare, so few people could do it…
"How much do you want?"
"Whatever you want to give."
I thought about it.

In short, we made a deal. Two pounds sterling. Not expensive. I took the thing and continued further. Then, I saw – a radiator. 
"Tell me, please. Which automobile is this from?"
"I have no idea. I have a lid for it somewhere."
"Show me the lid."
When he showed me the lid, I got shivers down my spine. He showed me a lid from a Jaguar! 
But to drag the thing – 30 kilograms! All the moulding and casting! I sent it by mail, packed. It was a lot of effort.

And so I acquired the details. They all fit. And are working to this day! Four years of hard work finally behind me. For four years, we assembled, and then the car was exhibited at an exhibition in 1984. Now the beauty is standing in the Ashdod Classic Car Museum. But, when needed, it goes out for a spin for weddings, for exhibitions, for celebrations.”