This one-off Jaguar has quite the story history to San Diego. The video is a compilation of scenes from San Diego to my home in Florida, and Austin where the car is undergoing a complete rebuild of the body (there are no body parts for this car,) it is all hand made because of the extensive galvanic corrosion that has occurred when aluminum comes into contact with iron/steel.
I had resisted writing about this car, but as people learned about it, they wanted to know more (I had kept the car hidden until 2014). People have also said that I must be rich in order to finance the restoration of this car- nothing could be further from the truth. It took forty years of saving and investing to be able to do this. I live in the same house my wife and I purchased with me as a 2ndLt Marine Naval Flight Officer student and my wife as a Navy Lt. nurse. There have been people who have offered to purchase the car, which I have always refused. My only mission for this car has been to have it restored to the way it look when my father (P. Frank Freeman) first purchased it from the British Motor Sales at 1902 Kettner Blvd.
Video timeline
1. 0:09. My dad, P. Frank Freeman, standing next to his 1956 XK140 Jaguar parked in front the home he had designed and built in 1959-1960.
2. 0:16 Doris Freeman (the mother who raised as if I were her birth son) standing next to the XK140 in a 1961 photograph.
3. 0:20. My stepmother’s father sitting in the driver’s seat of the XK140 in front of the house on Roswell St. Doris’ father was in the German Navy and she didn’t know if he had survived The War, until “out of the blue” she received a letter and wanting to come visit the family. This was 1962
4. 0:27. A blueprint drawing of the British Motor Sales dealership on Kettner Blvd.
5. 0:30 Location of British Motor Sales position as it looks today.
6. 0:37 1958 Magazine article about the Zagato Jaguar
7. 0:48. The Zagato Jaguar on display at the 1958 Geneva motor show.
8. 0:51. P. Frank Freeman standing next to the Zagato Jaguar in front of the Equity Funding Corporation office
9. 0:59 Doris Standing next to the car across the street from the Roswell home (photo, 1968)
10. 01:16 Me standing next to the car in my ROTC Uniform (photo taking 1964)
11. 0:21. Hitching up the car to the back of my IH Scout for the journey back to Florida (photo 1988)
12. 1:25. The car in Florida being dismantled.
13. 1:53 Preparing the car for transport to Classicjaguar in Austin TX for its’ rebuild.
14. 1:59 Finally made it to the Classicjguar restoration site.
15. 2:09. When sanded down through all the layers of paint, the original color of the car was Bronze and not Black like everyone thought because of the B&W photos that show the car as Black. No black paint was found anywhere on the car.
16. 2:16. Preparing to rebuild the engine.
17. 2:37 The finished rebuild of the engine.
18. 2:43. Setting up equipment to conduct a 3D scan of the car so that new wooden bucks can be manufactured for rebuilding the car body.
19. 3:14. Front Wooden bucks assembled and ready for building a new aluminum body.
20. 3:23 Paper template formed from which a new aluminum skin will be constructed,
21. 3:31. New aluminum skin formed around the car from the paper template
22. 3:43 The Zagato Jag standing next to some of the newly formed aluminum replacement panel.
23. 3:48 Rear 3D scan of the Zagato body.
24. 3:54 computerized 3D scan view of the rear body bucks to be built for the car.
25. 3:58. The rear wooden Bucks are now finished and ready to accept the forming of new aluminum panels.
26. 4:05. New aluminum panels formed on the zagato bucks.
27. Photos of the Zagato Jaguar as seen in the book “Jaguar XK150 Explored” by Bernard Viart.
28. Unraveling the history of the 1960 Jaguar XK 150 SE Zagato
In 1964 my dad had a 1956 XK 140 Jaguar. It was a beautiful white car that had recently been reupholstered in Tijuana, Baja California with black tuck and roll interior. In July, he came home and announced that he saw this beautiful exotic white Jaguar with a brown and tan leather and suede interior at the British Motor Sales company, and that he wanted to buy it. Later in life I learned that the car had been previously owned by a US Navy Lieutenant who drove it from Jacksonville, FL to San Diego and traded the car for what I think might have been an XKE – anyway that’s family lore.
During August of that year, the Mayfair grocery store chain had a contest with coupons in one of the brands of cigarettes where one could win some cash. So my dad and I drove to several different stores during the first few days, buying a pack of cigarettes at each one. After several days of disappointments, he gave up and announced that he would just have to buy the car without help from winning any cash. He told me he was going to trade in his XK 140 to which I pleaded with him not to and save it for me, for I would like to have it when I turned 16 and could drive. Yeah, like that was going to happen, and it didn’t.
On August 4th, he came home with the car and announced that it had been shown at the 1960 Paris Auto Show, and that it was the only one ever built. Although I was impressed at my young age, I remember telling him, that only an amputee would be able to sit in the back seats, let alone a teenage son, younger brother, and/or baby sister.
Shortly after my dad bought the car, one of his good friends asked him if he could drive the car in a rally down in Baja California. Now his friend also had a XK 140, but I guess he wanted to impress the girlfriend who was going with him on the rally. Fortunately my dad told him NO, for his good friend was killed when the XK 140 ran off the road and crashed down a ravine during the run. The girlfriend survived. The car became my dad’s daily driver and where ever he went, he got lots of compliments on the car.
Unraveling the XK-150 SE Zagato Jaguar History – (Part2)
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