Spring 2009, Car Chatter, Car Chatter

Claude’s First English Sports Car

Fri, Jan 23, 2009

It's unusual that we have a collection so extensively written about by the collector themself, but here is the story of one man's growing collection.

That's Claude Dennis leaning on the Jag on the left, and a couple of his friends with their rides. The picture was taken in the early 60's. The guy with the Healey never could drive that thing. He would nearly always go off the road whenever we were racing around town. The MGA had a 3.5 liter Buick V-8 in it. Worked pretty well and since the engine was aluminum, it actually weighed about 40 pounds less than the MGA.

Prior to the Jag, he owned a ‘47 Chevy fastback sedan which his dad bought for him when he was fifteen and, after that, a ‘55 Buick Century. Cunning old coot, his dad, bought him that Chevy knowing nearly every system on the car needed rebuilding. It took him nearly a year to get the car roadworthy. Engine, tranny, brakes, you name it, he fixed it-under his father’s tutelage, of course. He drove it all through high school and, if he earned a few pennies, he would put them into the car. Claude painted the car with his friends, Otto and Gordon, at their shop. Since he didn't have much money, Otto donated 2 gallons of yellow tinting lacquer he got somewhere on the cheap. Used all of it and man, that car was yellow!!

Claude used that car until he graduated from high school. He never had a desire to go to college but his parents sort of bribed him to go. The deal was: If he would agree to go to college for one year and sell his old car, his parents would pay for that year of school and give him $500.00 towards a new car. Those two were really sneaky. They knew he didn't give a rip about school, (He was planning on making money bashing fenders for Otto and Gordon) but, $500.00 for another car??? That was a no brainer.

So they had a deal, and he went to school and sold the yellow car for $150.00. His dad donated an old car to him for transportation while he looked for another one. About six months into the school year, he found a ‘55 Buick Special two door with, of all things, a standard transmission.

He met a woman in school that year and fell madly in love. A knockout natural blond, a real head turner, named Carol.

One day they were driving somewhere, lo and behold, there's a white Jag120 sitting by the road with a for sale sign on it. Carol spotted it first and really went into orbit about the Jag. So they stopped and looked at it. Claude had never even seen one before and really didn't know anything about them. Carol liked it. After haggling with the owner for a little while, he ended up trading him outright, the Buick for Jag. His life changed that day.

That Jag was a sore point between Claude and his dad from that time on. The rest of the men in the neighborhood were kind of upset with him too because they figured his car could blow their doors off. He never got that thing out of second gear around the house. So when school let out, he went to work at Boeing for the summer. He had to drive the Jag back and forth from Tacoma to Seattle. The Jag didn't like traffic very much and regularly boiled over. He blew the transmission up one Friday night drag racing some guy in a Vette. It was a big shock when he found out that a cluster gear cost about a month's net pay. He had to carpool with some people to save money and his dad wouldn't let him use one of his cars to commute unless he sold the Jag. Claude got the Jag back on the road in August and determined that it needed a complete rebuild. No deals were offered for a third year of school that didn't involve selling the Jag and he wasn't about to do that. Claude met a guy at Boeing that year named Jim Love. Jim had seen Claude driving the Jag into the plant and found out who he was. Jim was a sports car nut and Claude started hanging out with him and his friends. So he got to learn about Austin-Healeys, Alfa-Romeos and MGs, each designed by people with totally different notions about what the driving experience should be. All the guys were into road racing and talked about four wheel drifts, sway bars and ducting cool air to the brakes.

So of course, Claude had to try this "drifting" business. He can still remember the first time he tried it. He picked out about a 90degree corner in his neighborhood and kept going through it faster and faster. 25mph-nothing, 30-nothing, 35-nothing, 40-nothing, 45-some squawking from the tires, 50-sliding down the road backwards with all four wheels locked up. What happened there? He tried it again with 45mph-tire squeal, a little bit over 45, more squawking, maybe 48 and off the road again. He tried once more, and this time smashed the left rear fender into a lamppost as he spun. So he retired for the evening and fixed the fender the next weekend.

The next time he tried drifting was on an after work trip over the mountain pass to Eastern Washington. It was a Friday night and he didn't want to go home, so he thought that he would boom over the Pass, get an early breakfast and drive back the next day. The road had great switchbacks, one after the other. He lost control on about the third corner and spent the rest of the night getting the car out of the ditch. This cooled him down a bit and he decided to just nod his head wisely when the other guys talked about powering out of a corner.

He spent his time racing soldiers because he lived close to a big Army base. Friday and Saturday nights all of the troops were let out to cowboy around town. Many of them had cars and lots were all tricked up. So he used to hang around a drive-in, near the freeway on-ramp. Some soldiers would always start teasing him about his "little" foreign car. “Do Jags go?” they would often ask. He would tell them they could find out for $25.00 if they wanted to match top end speeds on the freeway. They were good sports about it and he generally always got his money.

Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore and asked the boss gear head in Seattle about drifting. He was an older guy (late 20s) named Brooks Stanford and was considered an authority on these matters because he had an SCCA Competition License and raced a Sprite. His first question was: "Well what kind of tires do you have?" Claude muttered something about Sears Economy and Brooks just about had a cow. "Don't drive that thing until you get some real tires on it. Those tires aren't good for more than about 80mph - they will kill you." Brooks went on like that for a while but Claude got the message.

The new tires completely changed the car. Its steering sharpened up and he started to be able to feel how the tires were relating to the road. He could now tell when he was tracking or when he had a little slip angle or when he had a lot. He was drifting! Big lesson number one - NEVER UNDER TIRE YOUR CAR. Since then, he has always put the tires on the car that the manufacturer recommended. Regardless of what the tire guy says. He learned to gas it up a bit in the corner when the rear end started to get loose (that Jag really over-steered). He was one of the guys now. He started reading books about Nuvolari and magazines about the latest Grand Prix races.

You know what happens next, he had to race!

Claude remembers one weekend at the Kent racetrack when he was sitting at the end of the uphill chicane watching the races. The races got to a big-bore event and this guy he sort of knew named Jerry Grant ("Tombstone Grant" because he wasn't regarded as a good pro driver). Jerry was racing a Vette in that race. He watched Jerry drift that Vette up the chicane at about 100. The car was sideways, snarling and spitting every lap and, you know what? Claude could cover his apex point on the last corner of the chicane with his hand. Jerry hit that same spot every lap-every time around. Claude also spent a lot of time in the pits looking over the cars that were winning. The poor old Jag never had a chance of even getting close to most of them in his class. Sure, it would run rings around an MGA, but come on, that's not fair.

Claude met a girl in the neighborhood that year and, as soon as her dad found out who she was dating, he threw her out of her house. Claude found out that he had accumulated quite a dangerous reputation in the neighborhood because of the Jag. So they got married and responsibility set in. They sold the Jag for $850.00 and he still dreams about it.

Claude graduated from college and went to grad school for his Masters. He earned some money fixing up old Healeys and TRs. Buy ‘em, fix ‘em, sell ‘em. He earned enough to buy a new Alfa Giulia Super. Little 4 door sedan with a Veloce twin cam engine and twin Webers. His dad liked it because it only had four cylinders. At a shamefully low price, he bought the E-Type he still has from one of his professors who had taken it apart and couldn't put it back together.

After school was finished, he got a job working for the government which required a lot of traveling. Since money was coming in, he thought he would treat himself to a new car and went down to the Plymouth dealer to buy a Hemi-Cuda. "Sorry, we aren't making those any more" was the reply. The 70’s were terrible for car nuts with the smog laws and all. Anyway, he found a used 1970 Plymouth Duster 340 with a four speed tranny and bought that. Pretty nice ride, a Holley double pumper, Hooker headers, big sway bars, heavy duty shocks, and it ran like a train. He drove that Duster all through the 70’s. His mother donated a Morris Minor to his wife for her to drive and Claude put a supercharged 1275cc Sprite engine in it and painted it hemi orange. She loved it.