Life After Hollywood - Jaguar Mark 2

You've probably never heard of an actor named Ed Hashim, but if your cable system carries TV Land, there's a good chance you've seen his work. A classic character actor, he played a million bit parts in everything from The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin to Dark Shadows. The usually inexhaustible Internet Movie Database offers virtually nothing about his life, aside from his birth in 1932 and his death in 1974, but his credits speak to his versatility: How many actors have appeared in both Gunsmoke and The Flying Nun, or Mission: Impossible and Get Smart?

The pinnacle of Ed Hashim's 16-year television and movie career came in 1961, when he landed the role of Jay Morago in The Outsider, the biography of an American Indian, played by Tony Curtis, who helps to raise the flag on Iwo Jima. That same year saw him appear in three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the popular and deliciously creepy television mystery series, as well as one episode of the forgotten Miami Undercover, a detective show co-starring boxer Rocky Graziano as himself.

In 1963, while living in Germany and working on a film called Jacob and Esau, Hashim decided to reward himself with a special car. And what was a better vehicle for an up-and-coming actor than Jaguar's sparkling Mark 2? Beautiful and quick--especially in 3.8-liter form, as Hashim ordered his--the Mark 2 was a favorite of Britain's upwardly mobile set in the early Sixties. He chose a car that had nearly every available option: a Laycock de Normanville overdrive, chromed wire wheels, a limited-slip differential, an AM/FM/shortwave Blaupunkt radio, reclining front seats, a crank-up antenna and a high-output generator.

"Ed picked the car up in England, where it was presumably registered with U.K. plates, and drove it in Germany for a couple of years before moving, with the car, to Hollywood around 1965. Hence the black California plate," said Geoff Rogers of Shutesbury, Massachusetts, who bought the Jaguar after seeing it for sale in the pages of Hemmings Motor News in 1994. Geoff, curious about the car's history, traced its ownership from the seller to Hashim's best friend, Mardig Kalarchian, who referred him back to the actor's widow, Koko.

Hashim loved the car, and kept it all of his life. He willed it to Koko, who in turn gave it to Kalarchian. The Jaguar sat in Kalarchian's Westchester County, New York, garage for a while. "Mardig told me later that he 'loved the man [Hashim], but didn't love the car,'" Geoff said. "I think Mardig drove it around for a year or two, and that it broke a lot," he said. Kalarchian finally sold the car to a man who partially dismantled it before giving up on the project and taking out an ad in Hemmings.

Geoff and his wife, Andrea, went to look at the Jaguar. "The car was very dusty, no wheels, and partly dismantled. The interior was covered in ghastly green velour. But it was certainly a solid, black-plate California car with mostly original opalescent dark green paint. The odometer read 49,000 miles, which was original. It was even sort of shiny under the dirt, so we made a deal for $2,600 and away we went with the car on our converted horse trailer." They named the car Rory.

The seller "had rebuilt the engine and performed other atrocities that took me two years to rectify," Geoff said. The twin-cam XK straight-six had been frozen, and the previous owner had bent the connecting rods by using a hammer and cold chisel to get the pistons free. The head had been rebuilt, but the valves were rattling around in their guides. Geoff took the whole mess to Steve Dutcher at Dutcher Automotive Machining in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and got back a sweetly running engine. Geoff rebuilt the brakes, the generator and the starter, replaced the worn parts of the suspension and substituted an all-synchro gearbox from his 2.4 Mark 2 project car for the 3.8's original Moss 'box. He installed a new clutch, and a new exhaust system.

A sizable mouse population had established itself in the car, and Geoff spent many an unpleasant hour demolishing the rodent condominium behind the dashboard. He tried to eradicate the smell with various cleaners, without success, before he found the answer: "I got a can of spray clear lacquer and sprayed everything up behind the dash," he said. "The smell was all in the jute material up in there; spraying it with lacquer just seemed to seal it in." The upholstery also needed attention. "I tore off the velour covers Ed had installed in Mexico when the leather got dried out from California sun. Ultimately, I found a similar car locally with a near-pristine original gray interior, so I bought that car for its interior and installed it in Rory.

"It has a great patina," Geoff continued. "I personally loathe reupholstered seats. Modern leather does not come close to the original Connolly Vaumol hides, which were tanned using a method that was abandoned around 1970. The newer stuff may be better in some ways, but original? Hardly. The old stuff does need regular feeding and cleaning if it is to survive, but I can spot an original Jag seat a long way off. The new stuff looks like it came out of a Lexus."

Considering its age, the paintwork was in good shape, but some long-ago repairs were beginning to come undone. Geoff found that the front of the car had been repainted, and because Kalarchian insisted that no bodywork had ever been done to the car while Hashim owned it, speculates that it might have been done by the Jaguar dealer to repair damage done in shipment. A big patch of paint and glazing putty had fallen away, so Geoff had the lower part of the car refinished by Silver Lake Auto Body in Madison, New Hampshire, choosing lacquer to match the look of the original paint.

Despite the warning to tailgaters, the brakes are just up to the task of stopping the car.

Geoff uses the car often. It's a regular at the British Invasion show in Stowe, Vermont, a 350-mile round-trip, and has made several trips to Cape Cod and New Hampshire's White Mountains. "I would never think twice about taking it on a trip like that," he said. "I know that if something breaks, I can fix it and get home." Not that anything ever has--a noisy generator bushing has been the worst of his problems. "This car is astonishingly reliable. In 21,000 miles and 14 years since I rebuilt it, it has never failed to start and has never let me down on the road. Little things go wrong, stuff starts to leak or rattle, but I find that if these things are given attention early on, the car responds well and does what is asked of it.

Back seat passengers--often the owners' children--are treated to many small luxuries.

"The car is a joy to own and a delight to drive. It's fast and smooth, gets 19-21 MPG, and looks, sounds, and smells lovely," he said. "It handles well for a large car. The Michelin XAS tires help that, although the shocks and bushings are the ones that came on the car when I bought it, and may be the originals. I did install an XJ6 steering rack kit, which has lightened and quickened the steering up quite a lot. I have a set of used Konis from another car and one day I will install them and some new bushings, just for laughs. Anyway, it's a sensory delight." Geoff let me take a turn behind the wheel, and I can confirm every bit of what he says.

His intention is to keep the car as original as possible. "Sometimes people tell me never to ruin this car by restoring it. I tell them don't worry. It's only original once. It even has 40-year-old Lucas wiper blades," Geoff said. "My wife says they're smeary. I say they're original, sort of. Besides, they are only smeary when it's raining."

The original wiring harness is still in use-and yes, a fire extinguisher is aboard.

Owner Geoff Rogers