Jalopnik
The V12 Jagchero vaporized the Electric Renault R10 in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity voting, but the lopsidedness of the matchup had some supporters of liberty, equality, and eternal torment crying foul. It's bad enough that the British entry was packing a V12 versus the French car's electric motor, but to make a sedan compete against a Rancheroized machine? That's why it's only fair that we have a PCH Superpower rematch today, featuring a more level playing field and one Bargain Hell Project from each side of the Channel.
Those postwar Jag saloons sure are pretty, aren't they? For most of us, ownership of such a rare and valuable cat has seemed so far out of reach that we've never even contemplated it. It turns out we've all been too pessimistic! You can get a 55-year-old Jaguar saloon for the price of a 15-year-old beater Civic! Can't believe it? Take a gander at this 1953 Jaguar Mark VII, my friends, and witness the easy attainability of your classic-Jag dreams! The seller is asking for $1,500, which means there's plenty of negotiating room when it comes to the wheeling and dealing. The car will need some TLC, no denying it. There's rust. Oh yes, plenty of rust. The upholstery is "petrified cracked and can be used possibly as a pattern." Not very shockingly, we find that the XK engine doesn't run. You could attempt a full restoration, and we have nothing but admiration for anyone insane devoted enough to take on such a task. Or you could swap in a V12 out of a junked XJ-S, head down to Tijuana for a diamond-tucked purple satin interior job, and leave the paint looking just as it is now. Add some Cherry Bombs and some rusty wire-spoke wheels and you'll be lookin' good on a budget!
When you're talking serious Hell Projects, two not-so-little words come to mind: Hydropneumatic Suspension! That Jag is pretty sweet, we'll give you that, but it rides on plain ol' harsh springs! Your backseat passengers will be liable to spill their champagne every time you hit a pothole, and that just won't do in a fine European luxury sedan. Those geniuses at Citröen put a very effective hydropneumatic suspension setup in their DS, and you could benefit from their brilliance by handing over 22 Benjamins to the seller of this 1969 Citröen ID19. I think the description of this car works best if laid out like a poem:
Project car.
Lost interest.
The best thing about this car is that it runs great.
Needs TLC with the hydraulic leaks,
upholstery
and paint.
Of course, you won't lose interest in this project, not even after the sixth month of cursing those Citröen geniuses and their leaky hydraulics! You'll persevere, and the reward will be worth all the agony!
Comments
Citroen. Hydraulic leaks. Nuff said.
ID19 sounds like the name of a CG Robot that Robin Williams would voice.....and French "leaky hydraulics" Wins the PCH each and every time!
Andree Citroen's hydraulic fuilds beats Joe Lucas' electrons FTW!
Even a dead Jag is no match for a running Citroen! France is the superpower of PCH.
I could never vote against a DS.
The Citroen. Becouse nobody Wins the most at building cars, that well, lose. But Win PCH!(if that makes any sense.)
Viva la France!
As much as I love the tres kewel lounge lizard of all automobiles, the DS19, the later models with quad headlights take it off he board.
Plus the chariot of the Prince of Darkness has a sunroof AND the fender skirts!
Tips the scales to the dark side of the force for me ... again.
Such style, such panache, so French. The Citroen in a landslide
Citroën bien sûr!
I am powerless to decide.
Both offer rarity, charm, and shocking difficulty in acquiring parts or making up for initial build quality issues. Either would be great to own... well, great for a friend to own.. or in-law, so you could observe from a safe distance.
And, should hell freeze over and/or world peace occur and they became drivable, either would be a memorable experience.
The romance of a classic Jag, the quirky je ne sais quoi that flows in the hydraulic veins of the DS - who could choose?...these qualities are why we love cars. It's Sophie's Jalopnik Choice!
Now if there were an Italian option here, I would know what to do...
My vote is for the DS. Since you brought up poetry, I have a haiku of sorts.
It will never run
My tenth check to Citroen bounced
Like the suspension
The DS is one of my most favourite cars, it would be hellish to fix but absolutely worth it. A rear wheel drive conversion, modern engine, uprated brakes, tasteful alloys and a metallic dark purple paint job and it would be my ideal car.
The Citroen will win this in a landslide, and that's the reason why I went with the Jaguar.
Boy, am I being belligerent today....
Citroen. Leaky hydraulic suspension says it all. No matter whether it runs or not, that will do it every time. Even over a Jag that doesn't run and is covered in rust.
@amblito: Bugger, I forgot a decent stereo for bumping Yé-yé compilations out of!
Todays special, Citroen Hydraulic condoms. Guaranteed to leak !!
I may be insane, but I think the DS19 is relatively benign. Put some Mexican blankets over the seats and spray some flat black Rust-Oleum on the body and you have a perfectly usable car. Put a Cherry Bomb muffler on it for that French Rat Rod vibe, and you're set. Oh yeah, the suspension... just keep topping it off, and park it on the street so the leaking LHM won't stain your driveway.
Or you could turn the Jag into a rat rod. Not the easy way, with a small-block Chevy, but with a hot XK motor. Bore the 3.4 liter engine out to 4.2, use high-compression pistons from an E-Type, give 'er a little head work and a cam regrind, and top it off with a trio of Weber 45DCOEs, and you've got a 300-horse mill that sounds awesome through an open exhaust. It'll be fun, except you will have sold your soul to pay for it--three Webers and a manifold will run you around $1500, the same amount you paid for the car. Oh, and you still have to do something to keep the dreaded tinworm from getting the rest of the car. And you need to fix the interior--you'll need about twice as many Mexican blankets as you used for the Citroen. And you'll want to completely rewire it...
A 55 year old rusty British car with a dry engine, rust, and no interior. To me, that beats the comparatively new Citroen, hydraulic leaks aside.
Besides, I'm pretty sure old DSs are required to leak.
What can beat a hydraulic Citroen? Anything? No.
I've got it! Take the Jag, give it the Citroen's suspension, and just for the hell of it, get a Dino V6 to power it (if you really want the seventh level of hell, gut a Ferrari Dino for it, just to piss off, well, everyone).
Murilee, how about stuffing the Jag XJ-S V12 into the Citroen. Maximum Hell. In fact, maybe so much that the universe might just implode from the joining of those two forces.
But a V12 DS really speaks to me for some reason.
I had to vote against the Citroen. Not because it wouldn't be hell. It absolutely would be. It's just that (at the risk of offending the Jalopnik masses) I've never wanted a Citroen.
I have never wanted a '53 Jag, either, but since I own about 1.5 Jaguars, there is a sense of loyalty there.
The Jag ... it's far gone enough that one could just gut it to the shell and do whatever to it. Not completely hellish.
The Citroen ... it runs, which means a reasonable chance of keeping the powertrain, and the related hell thereof.
Citroen wins.
Citroen.
Dang; I even caught myself thinking about what it would take to drive to Santee to pick that thing up. Mind you, that's halfway across the continent...
hmmm, Sometimes I Wonder how an Austin 1800 "landcrab" would go in the PCH battlefield against the Citreon, Not only does it have 70s British engineering, and Joe Lucas's finest, it _also_ has Hydropneumatic suspension
Yep, the best of both worlds, Mind you, I don't think there'd be too many of them in the US, but just think, all the time you can spend on lucas AND the hydropneumatic suspension
I voted for the Jag BTW, the words 'does not run' trumps 'leaky hydrolics" any day in my book
especially since it's a Jag.
and when the hydraulics leak DO NOT put your finger over the hole. Certain areas running at several hundred psi will slide your finger into hamburger. Even more fun from Citroen project hell!!
@smalleyxb122: Finally, somebody states the obvious. Why all the Citroen love? It makes no sense. These are some of the ugliest cars ever to escape a sketchbook. Why would somebody want one?
The $2200 would be far better spent in a strip club.
The owner of the bar across the street form where i work used to park his DS in the back and i would pass it daily. Before that i just thought it a relic. but in person the combined coolness of the ground clearance when parked, and headlamps cocked to one side following the front wheels... well. In person one daily recognises how PCH the car is put together , funny gaps, different sized parts... plus a design that's so unusual.
I voted for the jag, because there's a good chance that if you somehow manage to fix the Citroen hydraulics, they might work for a week or two. I can't imagine the jag ever being drivable further then 3 miles, making it pure project car hell
Tonight, voodoojoo will compose an ode to a forlorn goddess:
I love you, DS
I love you
I love you
I love you
I have no money for food
That was voodoojoo's ode to a forlorn goddess.
And now, an ode to a stodgy old Jaguar:
I've done it
I've done it
I've finally done it!
A post war jaguar that fits in my budget!
SCREEEAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!
I've crashed and I've died
That was voodoojoo's ode to a stodgy old Jaguar.
Good night.
I was digging the Jag until I got the part about "needs restoration" because nothing in the ad, especially not the pictures, prepared me for that shock. Still, it has a beautiful face. Wonder could I pry that off and adjust the Marquis? Or maybe the Camry? Nah. That would be putting earrings on a monkey.
I think the problem with the Citroen/Jag debates is that people only judge them by hydraulics/bad electrics and do not weight the individual pros and cons of the beasts.
Maybe it is time for palate cleansers.
DAGNABIT Jethro! That car's only 20 miles from me.
What the hay, it could be mine and a feature story for Jalopnik!
BTW, for all you that wrote it off due to the cost of filling the hydraulic system with green LHM fluid, this might be a red fluid car, 1969. In which case you can use all that Dexron ATF that's laying around in the garage since you decided to do an O/H on that Turbo Hydramatic back in '77, but then came to your senses.
And being the owner of 3-4 British cars and 3-4 Citroens at the moment (depending on how you define "owner" and "car"), I can assure you it's a tie on rust-bucketness.
"No, honey, I don't own that car, not exactly"
"Yessir, this little baby's my pride and joy"
"Uh yes, officer, I do have the registration here, somewhere. Well it might be back at the house. The front plate? Well, it might be back at the house too. In France. That house. Uh, the yellow headlights, well you see ..."
Y'all know how it goes.
Citro - Mike
Citroen DS. LHM leaks. Crazy electronics. Weird design. I like!
In PCH terms a Citroen D-series trumps everything else
My uncle's got a restored Jag Mk IX similar to this one, and my mom had an ID19 back when they were new. The process my uncle went through restoring the Jag was nothing compared to what it took for my mom to keep the Citroen running... when it was only 7 years old! So I'm gonna vote Citroen.
Citroen. Everything, the brakes, suspension, transmission, steering works off of the same hydraulic system which is a nightmare of stupid rubber preformed hoses. One, which goes from the reservoir to the pump, actually looks like it exists in the fourth dimension, it is so weird looking. I be there are, like, 2 in existence on the North American continent and available. The whole car depends on that hose bit. Yeah, runs great but won't move, won't stop if it did, won't even lift up off the pavement. So the fact that it doesn't steer doesn't matter.
@CptSevere: Does the steering depend on the hydraulic system in an ID? I thought that they didn't have power steering, having said that I think they introduced it on later models. Hmm...
The ID19. The hydropneumatic suspension alone is a PCH Royal Flush.
French cars are the Neutron Bomb of PHC.
Citroen all the way! The glory of owning a Citroen brings a tear to my eye.
Glory, hell!! It's the sting of warm LHS2 that does it for me.
The thing about the obvious choice is that it's the obvious choice...you will get the pneumos fixed...it will get painted. It will drive until it doesn't then will never go again.
I voted for the Jag because, as much as I adore these cars and would love to have another Mark, and as good as the 3.4 is when the carbs are in sync and as terrific as the trans and rear are between total implosions that is the key point - they WILL break - over and over! You can fix them but the true purgatory lies in the fact that you can and WILL fix them. And, of course, the electrical...oh, the electricals.The Citroen, on the other hand, reaches the point of absolutely no return. What fun is that?
That's a 5 main bearing ID19 with LHM.
Piece of cake.
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