This gentleman has a restoration shop just up the hill from my shop and he’s an inspiration. A former high school shop teacher turned Jaguar restorer after he, get this, lost his sight. This is a very well done documentary on his story.
Hi wife raced Jags?
Yes, and apparently successfully. I never knew that until I saw the video.
I don't know Stew but it looks like he specialized with is smart. What happens, however, is that a good specialized shop will end up with a customer who is a whale that loves them. And then they ask the shop to work on something else that is not in the specialty and they can't say no.
On a side note, 25 years ago they were selling a replica version of one of these (I think there are no real ones, btw) at Hershey and I was drunk with a bidders paddle. I did something much worse and bought a Mercedes.
If you’re going to specialize in a car based off nothing but memory, you might as well go with something that has a shape you’ll never forget.
Stew and Karen are great people. For years, I’ve been on an advisory committee for the auto body program at the local tech high school with them. Incoming freshmen are brought around to different shops for a tour so they can get a taste of some of the different opportunities that are out there in the trade. So they’d bring them to Stew’s to show restoration, mine to show collision, and so on. Actually, the bodyman Jake in the video is another graduate of the program like myself and a couple of my employees.
How big a shop do they have? Hopefully some younger apprentices they picked up from the voke program.
They have a couple buildings. Their website says 12,000 sf so decent sized.
I remember Stew saying something once that I thought really showed how he thinks. He was telling us that his grandson wanted to come work for him when he was old enough. He told him that he could do that but only if he first goes out and works for someone else for a year or two. That’s really thinking ahead and probably did the kid a huge favor in the long run. The mark of a good teacher, I suppose.
Local legend - I never met him but did recall seeing him at a Jag show at Motorcars a long time ago. His wife was describing the cars as they rolled in, he was listening to how they were running. I knew who he was as did all Brit car guys at the time.
Probably because they’re vehicles he knows, Karen daily drives a Volvo 240 and a square body Chevy pickup. Imagine what it must be like to have never seen a new car since 1985?
He must have been a great shop teacher too. Those guys put up with a lot of smart-ass, know-it-all kids (like me).
That is a cool video. Thanks for posting it. Agreed that shop class had all the wise asses in it. A lot of schools have dropped shop, sadly. You have to to to a voke school.
The good news is that quite a few high schools around here have started adding some form of shop or technology classes back in. The issue there is that now all the schools are fighting over enrollment numbers. It always used to be that it was a considered a privilege to go to a tech school where you had to be accepted and if you messed up, they were sending you back to your regular high school. Not anymore. They just went to a lottery system for enrollment so they’ll take any kid they can get. I think that will be a big problem down the road because it could be stealing spots away from kids that really want to be there and have a lot of potential.
