Gentlemen, Start Your Egos
I am the first to admit that I know nothing about cars. Still, if I were given my choice of extravagant luxury vehicles--a bonus, say, at the height of a bidding war to entice me to sell my screenplay to Warner Bros. instead of Fox--it would be the Jaguar XKE convertible. Of course, I’ve never driven one--hell, I’ve never even sat in one. But there’s something about this car. . . . It screams, “European glamour!” “A classic of a bygone era!” But what it screams loudest is, “Look how much money I have and you don’t!”
Or maybe it’s just that hood ornament.
I finally got to sit in the car of my fantasies when Hornburg Jaguar, longtime fixture of Sunset Boulevard, hosted a Hollywood-style premiere at the Petersen Automotive Museum to introduce Jaguar’s panting new 1997 XK8--the classic XKE’s postmodernized successor. Wrapped like debutantes in satin and bows, three XK8s (in topaz, red and--whoa!--teal) reposed fetchingly on the museum floor while searchlights clawed the night sky and waiters-in-white circulated among aficionados murmuring confidently about wishbone suspensions. Every few minutes, attendants with chamois wiped invisible smudges from the flanks of gleaming ancestral Jags posed like so many bored extras.
A bounty of celebrities was promised to proliferate the ranks of the 1,400 guests who’d RSVP’d, but the only two I managed to spot were from the humble celestial orbits of Must-See TV: John Larroquette and Matthew Perry. Perry, who liked “the red one,” is not a proud celebrity owner; he was, in his words, “just checkin’ it out.” Mr. Perry was amazed that the cars were equipped with automatic transmissions. “No stick?” he puzzled. (Clever, beloved, arch television characters are so decidedly less clever without their writers.)
For the price of a one-bedroom condo in Encino, Mr. Perry, or even you, could purchase the XK8. Your $70,500 investment will average 17 miles to the gallon in the city and an eco-disastrous 23 mpg while traversing California’s abundant highways. But that isn’t the point, one 40-something enthusiast assured me. “We don’t worry about the mileage. We are only concerned with the driving experience.”
When the new models were unveiled, grown men in very expensive suits jostled and shoved to sit behind the wheel of the very stationary cars. I honestly don’t know what everyone was staring at. I mean, it was a dashboard. And none of the needles were moving. I kept cajoling those behind the wheel to give in to their baser instincts and “do the horn.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. I’d give someone a heart attack.”
“Wimp.” After a dozen attempts at persuasion, I finally honked the damned thing myself--just as a couple of posturing Hollywood executive types were bending under the hood to drool over the motor. Very satisfying.
This party, we were assured by our host, was the absolute best place to have a heart attack, since we were presently surrounded by the largest ratio of doctors-to-party-square-footage in the country. Despite the assurances, not a single guest obliged him by collapsing, not even when the price of the new models was revealed. We were also assured that many people here had purchased five or six Jaguars over the years, which made me suspicious. Don’t these things last? I’ve had my Nissan seven years.
Maybe I didn’t belong here. A clutch of Jaguarians studying the XK8’s tiny trunk debated how many--if any--golf bags it could consume. I blurted out that it didn’t appear to be able to hold a single upright bag of groceries and was met with a near-choreographed round of sneers. “People who drive Jaguars don’t buy groceries,” was the devastating riposte.
In truth, not all the guests were so taken with the XK8. One fellow in his 20s, evidently unimpressed by the splendors of the new breed, wandered into the adjacent gallery featuring Famous Cars of Hollywood Films. His eyes lit up as he posed for his companion’s camera in front of his dream car: Fred and Wilma’s Flintmobile.
