‘Original’ D-type complete with drawn-on house!

The proof of genuine historic car provenance often lies in the detail. Recently, poring over the entrails of a 1950s sports-racing car, it was initially quite difficult to determine what survived from that original period after the predations of many years’ subsequent updates, improvements, spit-and-hope blacksmith mods, damage repairs and layer upon layer of ever more lavishly-applied paint. It was evident that some of the body panels were really quite recent replacements unmistakable when not only the wheeling grain is still visible on unpainted inner surfaces, but so are the guide lines which had been scribed for rivet holes to be drilled. Way back I recall sliding under a Jaguar D-type tub which the owner hotly

claimed was a 1950s original that had been “stripped back” to bare metal. Underneath it with an inspection lamp burning my car I then found on the tub’s rear bulkhead skin not only sharply-defined, bright and reflective scribe lines but also a scratched-on sketch of a little house, with four criss-cross windows, front door approached by a winding garden path and the piece de resistance a crooked chimney on top emitting a curly plume of smoke. It had obviously been a slow day at the panel shop. But where there is such a stark divergence between what an owner wants to own, and what he actually owns, the capacity of so many for self-deception seldom fails to amaze me. El)