I spent a pleasant 1.5 hrs on the phone with Paul at the close of the business day yesterday (unfortunately to the detriment of the 17 or so others who were trying to reach him).

As some of you may be aware, he is indeed rolling up shop, and if nothing changes, it will probably be as cataclysmic of a shutdown as Coventry West with a lot of impossible to replace original bits collected as buy-outs over the decades going in the bin or crusher.

That’s just to remind everyone that NOW is the time to make offers and ask what he has b/c he’s opening up inventory that was formerly reserved to be on-hand for those complete restoration cars, and thus was formally unobtainium being the last of their kind in the world.

Far from binning an crushing NOS fenders I KNOW he’d prefer to find someone to take on/over the business.

That’s a challenge b/c he’s moving on not because he has to, but because it makes more financial sense to do so. He’s the landlord of his own properties and the business’s payements of rent is how he’s really keeping himself -in the hobby, but compared to what the properties SHOULD bring, he can’t pay himself that out of the business level he’s doing, so it just makes more sense to eventually landlord the properties out to someone other than his own hobby.

That doesn’t seem to make him any less sad or concerned for the customer base he’s built up and if it were a dying whish… have the business go on in some form or fashion with the massive otherwise unreplaceable stock he has.

He hasn’t found anyone.

But in part that’s because he’s still been so busy day to day he hasn’t really apparently done a search other than observing the local business people he knows and he used to work with go the same direction. E.g. an Aston person who used to also service cars in cooperation no longer does so because by only accepting 2005ish cars and newer he KNOWS he can plug it into a computer which will tell him which bit needs to be replace to have the customer go home working with less risk of side-problem popping up in association with hours of poking and diag work that older cars need.

I write this as part of a promise to both put the word out about stock that was never previously available being now available, as well as to say, well if anyone knows anyone who has interest it sounds like he’d bend over backwards to work with anone serious about trying to keep the show going. The problem is of course… the massive warehouse of inventory, where that might go, and how it might get there. A massive $$$ investment in just storage even if some things are practically given away. So if you know someone in the resto industry who might have the space and desire to have an XJS specialty, this might be the time and opportunity to add that as a business decision.

Anone need an XJS door for like $40? Or a FREE fender? Come pick it up! (IDK how serious that was, but that’s just an illustration of how ready he is to avoid seeing things crushed in the future.)


~Paul K.

 

Yikes!!

 

Phone number and address of Pauls please

 

Google is your friend: http://www.paulsjaguar.com/

 

Website as above. Note that Paul is much more of a phone person, but the messages to pile up if you don't catch him live and in-person. It's better to re-try a phone call.

Any of us who've been in the XJS world for a long time know of Paul and his superior reputation. His inventory is or was massive and split into two locations. They've been making new seat coves for example for years from patterns but using the LAST HIDES of the original Connley leather factory (now gone) for his restoration customers.

Paul's Jaguar
www.paulsjaguar.com
4073 N. E. 5th Terrace
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33334.
Tel: (954) 846-7976.
Fax: (954) 846-9450

 

I hadn't heard this until I got a return call from Jeremy last night on my voicemail informing me of this. To say the least, I'M GUTTED!!!!

Not only was this my 'go to place' for parts I couldn't find anywhere else, but the friendly, helpful advice they freely dispensed was INVALUABLE!