Mad Dogs & Englishmen Weekend

Early Saturday, July 9th, 10 JAGM members with 7 cars met at DeNooyer Jaguar in Kalamazoo where the MD&E club’s road rally was also starting. The rally drew around 50 cars, mostly British, and included 3 Jaguars – an XK8, an E-Type convertible, and an XK140 that had been driven up from Peoria, Illinois. The rally cars made a very colorful display as they lined up for the beginning of their drive. With most of our JAGM cars lacking a navigator in the passenger seat, we had decided to go our own way from the dealership, heading over to Kalamazoo’s Air Zoo Aviation museum after a nice breakfast at LaRue’s restaurant just down the street.

The Air Zoo has a most impressive array of aviation history, from early 1900’s multi-wing aircraft through military planes of the 20th-century wars and even some spacecraft and sci-fi movie displays. Unexpectedly, there was a section with some amusement park rides – these were actually operating, which seemed popular with families and their small children. The museum displays fill three large buildings. In the two hours we spent there, Ellie and I only got through two of them; I guess we’ll have to come back again to see what we missed!

Finding ourselves with some time that afternoon and evening, we decided to look up a popular stop that JAGM has used in many previous years’ Mad Dogs trips – the Barn Theatre in nearby Augusta. As luck would have it, we were able to reserve six seats together, albeit near the back of the barn. So we took a nice scenic drive over to Augusta where we had a leisurely dinner at the Player’s Grill and an ice cream stop at Fat Mike’s (really!) before the play.

The Barn Theatre Company presented a fast-paced and very funny musical, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

Sunday morning the weather was still beautiful and we all made our way over to the Gilmore museum for the Mad Dogs and Englishmen British Auto Faire. The show was very well-attended this year, probably owing to both the great weather and the pent-up demand for post-COVID outings. The hundreds of cars included around 40 Jaguars. Our members quickly located some nearby shade and made ourselves comfortable!

Three JAGM members won awards in their classes. Jake Zindel took 2nd place in the E-Type Roadster class with his Regency Red OTS. Lee Jacobsen won 1st place in the “Other British to 1964” class with his 1938 MG SA Tickford Drophead Foursome, and Phil Wiltshire was awarded 2 nd place in the “RHD Rare Gems” class for his 1967 MGB GT V-8. Congratulations to all!

Gary Hillebrand