Well.... now California is totally different. Society is far more homogenized than it was back in the 80's and 90's. By 2000, a majority of everything has been taken over by corporations. Most of the mom & pop and family businesses have closed, been bought out or replaced by "some familiar name". Now you can live anywhere and pretty much have the same thing. It's kind of sad, actually.


Yes, there is a big difference in pretty much every aspect you can name... it handles much better, it's quicker and has far more power. It's really night and day when it comes to comparing the 4.0NA and the 4.2 supercharged.

And, sadly, the 97' has been sitting for a while. I was taking off the dash to have re-veneered, but one of mine was damaged behind the dash that I didn't know of, and the airbag piece is so difficult to remove, I gave up, so now it's just sitting there. I need to sell her.

 

Forward that to Skid Mark....he is always trying to convince us that the XK8 is close in performance to the XKR....

Sorry to hear about California being kind of hum drum now....I got out around '81. I remember running the Bay to Breakers across San Francisco and thought it was crazy in '78 with 14,000 people....I ran it again around 95 and there were over 140,000 runners!!

California has over 32 million people now and I thought there were too many with 12 million. All of Australia is only 20 million....

Glad you are enjoying your new XKR.

cheers,

jj

 

Honestly, after driving the XKR the XK8 was really uninspiring to me. It's still a beautiful car, but sadly, I didn't find myself enjoying it as much after I got the XKR.

And yeah, the whole of society has pretty much changed for the worse here. It's far too generic. I'm not saying it's horrible here, but most of the people I grew up with moved away and are happy with that decision.

 

Too bad about Calif.

But at least it gives you more choice about buying used cars.

Hang in there.

And enjoy both of your Black Beauties.

Let us know if you ever want to drop by our one traffic light village of 4,000 people on the front range of the Alps, to get away from it all.

cheers,

jj