I ordered the JDHT Heritage Certificate for my recent purchase on Sunday and got the email copy today. (Fast service!) I was pleased to see that all numbers are matching, and also that the current colors of white/cream with red interior are original to the car. Saves me from soul searching when it comes time for a repaint.
What I found somewhat surprising is that under “Original distributor”, it says “Orka, Reykjavik, Iceland” and for “Original dealer” it says “Personal Export Delivery.” Am I correct that the latter notation means that the first owner took delivery from the factory and then shipped it overseas himself? I see it indicates a registration was issued in Coventry.
Anyone have any idea what “Orka” was/is in Iceland? Google is of minimal assistance. “Orka” apparently means “energy” in Icelandic and HS Orka is a geothermal energy company there. One scenario I can envision is an American service member stationed at Keflavik AB in Iceland bought a new FHC, took delivery in Coventry, spent some time touring Europe, and then had it shipped back to a new duty station in the US. Or perhaps back to Iceland, but an E-type would seem to be of limited utility in Iceland. (Perhaps I’m wrong on that last point; never been there)
Wish I could help with Orka but think your other guesses are right on the mark. When cars were picked up in the UK they were always issued a UK registration. I’ve seen cars that were UK personal export delivery where the distributor was Max Hoffman in NY. Do not know what the exact arrangements were but it was clearly destined for the USA but issued a UK registration.
pauls
Thanks, Paul. The other thing I forgot to mention is that at least by sometime in the '70s it was in California. My friend who sold it to me bought it in 1985 out of the Palm Springs area and that seller had owned it for several years. Don’t know anything prior to that. Interesting stuff.
So I happened to go to xkedata.com to the listing I had made a few months ago and I see that the information from the heritage certificate was added already today. I assume JDHT must do that. Cool!
I also submitted a follow-up question to the JDHT archivist, asking if there’s any more information on “Orka.”
Scott I have a Jaguar Overseas Distributor and Dealers booklet 21st Edition Sept 1961. On page 9 for Iceland, Reykjavik it says Orka Ltd., Laugaveg 178, PO box 360. It looks like this one on ebay just a little newer.
Thanks for the input, all. I got this response back from JDHT: “The distributor could have been acting on behalf of the customer but the ledger does not say, all we know is it is a personal export, unfortunately we do not have any information on the distributors.”
I’ve learned enough to satisfy my curiosity. Now back to the more important task of getting it running again.
I just noticed this. Does this mean that if you apply for a heritage certificate your car is automatically entered on xke data or do they add on the information only to cars already listed?
I don’t know the answer to that, because I had already created a listing for my car a few months ago. I presume it is the latter, that they only add it if it’s already listed, but I could be wrong. Perhaps some of the other members with more knowledge of JDHT know the answer.
I’m also not sure what would happen if the JDHT found that the numbers, colors, etc didn’t match what is currently in xkedata. In my case, everything in my car matches the certificate.
-Scott
I think it would be presumptuous of them if they did either. As far as I can see they make no mention of doing anything other than verifying your data and sending you a certificate. Some holders of a JDHT certificate may not want their car’s information made available to the world.
That is my concern exactly. It is my property for now and I should be the one making the choice about listing or not listing information about it on a publically accessable site.
Regardless, they definitely added the new information to xkedata for mine. There couldn’t have been any other way it would have appeared. I received the email “advance copy” at maybe 8 am my time and a couple hours later I happened to go into xkedata and the info about build date, personal export delivery, Iceland, etc. was already added. There’s no way the info could have been added by anyone other than the JDHT archivist.
I didn’t personally have a problem with it but understand that others might.
This is indeed strange. If you look at the entry of a particular car (I suggest you look at my 1R9191 as it illustrates the point well), under the photo at the top right is text that says “Dataplate updates: Show dataplate edits”. If you click on the highlighted word “Show” it shows below all the edits to the dataplate part of the entry. In the case of my car there are several over the years. In the case of your car there is only one edit in March which presumably you made. So, if other changes were made, they appear to have been “behind the scenes” - i.e. by someone who is not tracked in the same way as standard users. One clue may be the “Heritage Notes” section in your entry which notes that it was a personal export car - I’ve seen this section added to another car in the database and wondered at the time how it was done [Edit - probably not a mystery - there is a field in the database edit entry that probably gets put here if there are Notes at the end of the Heritage Certificate]. It does seem that maybe the folks at JHT have access to the database entries and can change them in a non-transparent fashion which is rather unnerving. At least changes made by other parties can be tracked…
Not sure, but I can’t see any other explanation. Information that was unknown to me and was only on the heritage certificate, like exact date of manufacture and dispatch, distributor (in Iceland!) and personal export delivery were added to the site within two hours of the time that I received the certificate by e-mail. It could have only come from JDHT. Again, it didn’t bother me, but I can see how others might be concerned.
It’s possible that I checked a block somewhere when I requested the certificate online giving permission to share the findings. I haven’t gone through the process again to see if that pops up anywhere.
