3.8 Dash Question

[Car-Nut]

What year was the aliminium dash changed to the black vynal dash on the S1 3.8?

Sorry to make it sound like a pub quiz question :cheers:

[HarryW]

Clive, Porter's 'Original Jaguar E Type' indicates Sept. 63 when 'front finisher panel' changed from 'aluminium to leather' (?) 8)

[Car-Nut]

Cheers Harry

[pmansson]

My 3.8 OTS has the older alu panels but was produced on March 22nd, 1964. Either a PO has changed to the older parts, or they found some more alu panels in the factory and decided to use them.
My red interior is very even in its wear and tear. Lots of patina with no obvious later additions, besides the loose carpet strips.

(A Lucas part on my 420G, produced in May `68, is stamped 1962, so they certainly did use old stocks until there were none left. This is long before the current "Use before" markings on all consumables....)

[Echezeaux]

I have seen early 64 with full alloy ( dash,console ) and some with the cubby box ( like late 64 ) trimmed same colour than the seats on alloy console .

It seems that the records and reality can be quite appart.
Not the first time , though .

Thierry

[Heuer]

People forget that Jaguar built its cars to order. So a customer number and build sheet was assigned to each chassis detailing colours, options plus any special requests. Providing they had stock you could have what you wanted so if a customer was wedded to the ally dash they could have it, even on a later car. I was told this by Eric Suffolk, of Suffolk & Turvey, who used to work on the Jaguar production line. If the customer had not specified anything in particular they would use whatever stock was to hand. For example there has always been great debate about the OTS hood covers (tonneau) as to whether they were pvc or mohair. If you asked for mohair you would get it otherwise it would be the pvc one, which were externally sourced, unless they had enough mohair hood offcuts in which case they would make one them from those to avoid waste. Sir William was determined to keep production costs to a minimum and such cost cutting was really detrimental to the longevity of the parts, unfortunately.