About
The author
This archive is written and maintained by one person, from ownership and from published sources, with no commercial interest in what it says.
Jon Cosson owns a Series 1 Jaguar E-Type and writes this archive. The work is done in the evenings, from published books and magazines, from the owners' clubs and the enthusiast registers, and from the ordinary business of keeping an old car running. It is not written from the factory workshop manual or from the Heritage Trust's own research guides, and it says so where that matters. Where those sources disagree, the disagreement is recorded. Where a figure cannot be attributed to a named source, it is left out and the gap is stated.
Nothing here is for sale. The archive carries no advertising, no sponsored content, no affiliate links and no valuations, which is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. The reasoning is set out in how to read this archive.
About Jon Cosson
Jon Cosson spent four decades in IT and cyber security leadership, finishing as a chief information security officer. He chaired a financial industry cyber security committee and is an international speaker on the history of code-breaking and on staying safe online, with talks in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Copenhagen and Paris as well as across the United Kingdom, including at Bletchley Park.
He is an East End boy from Hackney Wick who now lives on the edge of the North York Moors. He keeps five old British cars: a Jaguar E-Type Series 1, a Jaguar Mk2, an MG TF1500, an AC Aceca-Bristol and a Triumph Stag. He writes these guides in retirement, for the pleasure of it.
Forty years of work in which a missed detail could have serious consequences is not a bad preparation for an archive that tries to get its facts straight.
Other guides he writes
The same approach is applied to a handful of other subjects. All of them are free to read and written to the same rules.
- mgtseries.com. The MG T-Series, TA to TF, written from ownership of a TF1500 and covering the XPAG engine, chassis lubrication and the differences between the models.
- triumphstag.org. The Triumph Stag, written from ownership, with the alloy V8's timing chains, cylinder heads and cooling treated at length rather than repeated as folklore.
- acaceca.com. The AC Aceca and its Bristol six, written from ownership of an Aceca-Bristol, covering the alloy body over an ash frame and the cross-pushrod head.
- jaguarmk2.com. The Jaguar Mk2 saloon, the XK-engined car that shares much of its mechanical thinking with the E-Type, written from ownership of one.
- giuliaspider.com. The Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider, the twin-cam Italian counterpart to the British cars above, kept to the same rules on sourcing and figures.
- joncosson.com. His personal site, which carries the talks, the writing and the connections between all of the above.
Corrections
Corrections are welcome, particularly where a reader can point to a source. A note that a figure here is wrong, with a reference to the document that shows it, is more useful to the archive than anything else it receives.