Before picking the car up on Saturday, my friend and I stopped by the Flying Heritage museum to watch them take the Hawker Hurricane and Polikarpov I-16 Type 24 Rata up for a demonstration flight. The Hurricane is a beautiful aircraft, not as pretty as a Spitfire, perhaps, but quite handsome. The Rata is like a pug dog–squashed-nose and barrel-bodied but likable all the same.
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I picked this car up on Saturday with the help of my friend Jeff. Seems like a good machine so far, the usual “oh my god, what have I done” moment hasn’t yet arrived (you’ll know when it does). I even got 28 MPG on the trip back!
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This is probably more like it.
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I’m not sure how realistic this version is–need to do a cost guesstimate and then recoil in horror, I imagine. It’s “smaller” and more “zoned” than the prior effort, but with the complication that my office and Allie’s darkroom need to be housed out here, due to a smaller house. That means the cut floor space is added back in more expensive form. Sigh.
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Consider: This car was $69,000 new in 1996 (in today’s dollars, that’s about $90,000). I’m paying almost exactly 5% of the 1996 price for this car, in 2008. That depreciation is absolutely mind-boggling; in constant dollars, the car essentially lost 97% of its value in a bit more than a decade. Much as I love Jaguars, I cannot imagine buying one new unless I had chests of gold doubloons.

This Vanden Plas is not absolutely perfect, but it is in very nice condition, with 84,000 miles. I think it’s “Kingfisher Blue,” which is a darkish blue-green, depending on the light. The inside has all the usual excess, including lambswool over-rugs and picnic tables for those carefree afternoons picnicking in wine country gorging on gut bombs at the drive-in. It’s also the long-wheelbase version, which means the rear doors are about ten feet long.

After visiting the air museum (see the post prior to this one) we took a jaunt to the 2008 All British Field Meet. We arrived as things were winding down a bit, a few cars were leaving…still plenty to see!
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Paul Allen, of Microsoft fame, has opened a museum–The Flying Heritage Collection–featuring a collection of World War II fighter aircraft in Everett, Washington, not very far at all from Rusty Heaps HQ. It’s tremendous. And the best part? They are all in flying condition, and are flown!
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I enjoy how-to videos like this, even if I don’t have the skills to actually “how-to,” in this case. (The subject seems appropriate, though.)

To me, videos like this are a bit like the old joke about how to carve a horse from a solid block of marble: Just remove everything that doesn’t look like a horse.

Some photos taken at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington July 5, 2008. I didn’t take any notes and I’m not a compulsive photo snapper…so the selections are pretty random, and without captions, for the most part!
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Just have the front badge and the opening part of the hood to bolt back on, and of course getting the linkage for the governor sorted out.
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