1969 Jaguar Xke E-type 2+2 on 2040-cars

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Stolen Jaguar Recovered Forty-Six Years Later

Forty-six years ago Ivan Schneider, successful Manhattan lawyer, bought himself the Jaguar convertible that would feature in a most unusual tale of unrequited love. It was the first (and "prettiest") of many luxury cars he would own, his companion on fast drives - and the only one that was ever stolen. Forty-six years later, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol analyst running a routine export check through a stolen car database came up with a hit. The 1967 Jaguar XKE was hot. The problem: It was already on a cargo ship, in a container, headed for Europe, two days out of the Port of Long Beach on the Pacific Ocean. Investigators with the California Highway Patrol and nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau got to work. New York police still had the March 1968 incident report. CHP investigator Michael Maleta spoke with Schneider in Florida, where he now lives. Schneider thought it was a prank. "After we convinced him, he was excited," said Maleta. After all, Schneider told The Associated Press on Wednesday, he would think of the car every time he bought a new one. And, he said, he is a car guy who has owned quite a few exotics. For the months he owned it, he was in love. "I've always said that was the prettiest," Schneider, now 82, said. Tracing the car's history, Maleta learned the Southern California man exporting it to the Netherlands had bought it about three months ago from an owner in the San Joaquin Valley, who himself had it 40 years. What happened between its disappearance from the concrete canyons of the Upper East Side and its California sojourn - Maleta hopes his investigation will answer that. After its out-and-back sea journey to the Netherlands, the car is back in Southern California, more than two months after the law finally found it. It's rusty and scratched, but still worth about $24,000 - and far more if restored, as Schneider plans to do. He just won't push it too hard. It's old, so is he, and though beautiful it is known for trouble under the hood. "I'll use it as a Sunday car," Schneider said. "They were never reliable." At least, one day soon, it will be back home. Related Gallery 2014 Jaguar XJR Test Drive Weird Car News Jaguar stolen car

Lapping Le Mans with 1956's version of a dash cam

Mike Hawthorne and Ivor Bueb won The 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1955 driving a Jaguar D-Type. The following year, a few days before the race, a British broadcaster put cameras on Hawthorne's car, hung a mic from a plate on his race suit and had him narrate a lap of the Circuit de la Sarthe.
It is compelling viewing. A new pit complex was built after the massive accident on the front straight in 1955, but this was still a time when crews prepped for the race on roads that were open to the public. Hawthorne's lap includes maneuvers to avoid bicyclists and cars, and gems like letting us know that doing 185 miles per hour down the Mulsanne Straight was where you could "relax a little, recover your energy." Watch him work it like the men of old in the video below.

SVR plans to tune electrified Jaguar-Land Rover models, but not the I-Pace

Jaguar-Land Rover's SVR division has only put its name on high-horsepower gasoline-burning cars, like the XE Project 8 built in strictly limited numbers. It's open to the idea of tuning electrified models, whether they're electric or hybrid, but it confirmed it's not currently planning on making a spicier evolution of the I-Pace. "We will be developing electrified versions of our cars, be that fully electrified or plug-in hybrids," affirmed Michael van der Sande, the division's managing director, in an interview with Auto Express. But although the electric I-Pace (pictured) raced in a one-make race series held on the sidelines of Formula E events for two seasons, and SVR could credibly claim to inject track DNA into a street car, it stressed the I-Pace doesn't appear in its product plans for reasons that remain a little bit murky. Jaguar announced the end of the eTrophy series in May 2020, which might explain why it's reluctant to exploit racing's marketing power. "There are other various things we are working on which we can't talk about, but we're very interested in electrification. That's why we got involved in eTrophy," van der Sande clarified. "The technology transfer, the learning applies to that car and other cars but we're not planning an SVR I-Pace at the moment." His comments confirm we'll need to be patient to see what SVR's take on an electric or hybrid car looks like. One of the first electrified models to receive the go-fast treatment might be the next-generation XJ tentatively scheduled to make its debut before the end of 2020. It will be exclusively electric, though it won't look as radical as the I-Pace, so Jaguar will need to find a way to replace the hot-rodded XJR 575 model it positioned at the top of the last-generation model's line-up. It's not too far-fetched to speculate the next Range Rover also due out in the coming months will receive some degree of electrification, and it could spawn an SVR-tuned model, too. Related Video: