Pacific Coast Highway | Proteus Jaguar D-Type

Nic Cuarta knew the D-Type before he knew the man who owned it. Years ago, while cutting his teeth at his family’s vintage Jaguar shop in Florida, the car came through the door. Nic never worked on it. He just remembers standing there thinking how cool it was. Years later, after starting Beeline in Santa Cruz, the same D-Type turned up again, this time only a couple of blocks away. Today, its owner Jay is a mentor and advisor to Nic, and the D-Type has become a familiar presence at the shop. It’s a replica, built from period Jaguar components and later versions of what Jaguar engineered at the time. An XK straight-six makes around 300 horsepower in a car weighing roughly as much as a ’71 911. There’s a monocoque chassis, a trellis subframe up front, disc brakes at all four corners, Webers that still need sorting, and very little separating its occupants from any of it. The headers sit directly in front of the passenger. The exhaust exits on the same side. Intake roar, backfires on the overrun, a sport-bike-sized windscreen and sidewalls working underneath you. Nic has put people in the passenger seat who wanted out after three miles. But on Highway One, with fog coming off the Pacific before the road disappears into the redwoods, it starts to make sense. “It’s way more fun to go slow and technical than it is fast and perhaps heroic,” Nic says. “You’re behind a sport bike windscreen. It’s motorcycle loud. You’re in the environment.” Directed by: Paolo Lekai https://www.instagram.com/paololekai Featuring: Nic Cuarta https://www.instagram.com/beelinemotorclub Read the article: https://petrolicious.com/blogs/articles/the-coastal-road-proteus-jaguar-d-type Follow: https://instagram.com/petrolicious Subscribe to The Petrolicious Post: https://petrolicious.com/products/the-petrolicious-post? Drive Tastefully® #drivetastefully #petrolicious #jaguardtype #dtype