The Joy of the Jaguar XK140 Comes in Driving It. Winston Dabbs is a product of his time. As a young man in 1970s Compton, California, he was swept up in the local enthusiasm for British sports cars, status symbols among young black men of the time. Dabbs’s own entry into the world of British cars was modest — a Bugeye Sprite which he bought from a friend for $75 — but it sparked a passion that has stayed with him to the present day, a passion that led to a career in automotive restoration.
In the late 1990s, however, that passion ebbed when the demands of business and life prompted Dabbs to park his 1955 Jaguar XK140, purchased some ten years earlier, in the back of his garage and throw a cover over it. There the car collected dust for fifteen years until one day a few years back, Dabbs decided to pull it out, dust it off, and take it for a drive in the California sun. The Jag, now fully restored, hasn’t had much rest since then, and what rest it does get is thanks to the XK120 that Dabbs brought into his garage in 2012.
Now in what he calls “the highlight of his life,” Dabbs is always ready to hop in one of his dropheads and make a break for the city limits.. After all, as Dabbs puts it, “there’s no sense in having a car that you look at and say how beautiful it is if you can’t get in it and go to San Francisco.”
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