THE JAGUAR STORY

When I was in my early twenties, I came into an inheritance and I decided that what I wanted most was a sports car! As a teenager, I was a sports car fanatic, reading and dreaming about frenched headlights and Aston Martin DBR2s. But there were only 12 of those imported into the country each year. As the years went by I continued to admire a variety of high performance vehicles. At the time of the story I lived in Montana but I had a friend in Tacoma, Washington and while I was on a visit to see her, I decided to buy my dream car.

Years later I would marvel at my impulsiveness - I could have spent the money on a trip to Europe or a house…but I was after all, just starting out in life.  Driving my Volkswagen Beetle, I drove to a Porsche dealers' to have a look. The salesmen there totally ignored me when I entered the dealership. I found this quite rude and unhelpful and thought - wow - if this is what I get when I'm trying to buy a car, what will happen when I want service on the vehicle.

Well, just next door at the Sports Car Center, there was the new 4.2 litre Jaguar on the showroom floor!  It was British racing green with sleek lines - it looked like it was moving when it was standing still! It was so beautiful, I just had to have it.  The owner of the center gave me a few driving lessons and soon I was double clutching to downshift and taking corners like a champion race car driver.. I had just lost 50 pounds so I bought an all-new wardrobe and in the next three months I drove 15,000 miles in my new car.

I went from Seattle across the top of the states to New York. I went to all of  the New England states to Montreal then down the eastern seaboard and through the south.  At one point in the Ozark mountains in Arkansas the engine began to scream - very scary. It was a broken fan belt and I had to manage with makeshift substitutes until I got to Fort Worth, Texas. Eighty per cent of the parts were backordered for this new car. I carried a case of Castrol oil in the trunk and got very adept at checking the oil and adding it when needed. Eventually I drove across the southwestern desert region to Los Angeles.  I went along the coast up through San Francisco to Seattle where, in a restaurant parking lot, someone creamed the entire side of my car. They didn't leave a note. Well, by this time, I had learned the reality of owning a Jaguar - you really need a second car. Every time you had anything done it had to be done by a specialist and that was terribly expensive.

I took the car back to where I bought it and arranged to trade it in on an MGB. But just before I did, I wanted to take it for one last ride. There's a stretch of freeway between Seattle and Tacoma and I took it as fast as I could. In the Jaguar, the tachometer red-lines way before 160 miles per hour - the back end isn't really built to take that speed. The engine started vibrating and straining when I reached 130 miles per hour so I left it at that. The next week I heard that the engine blew up on the Jag - but by then I was driving my MGB and I drove it for the next 12 years.

Students inevitably get caught up in my story. I was their age at the time. I was getting the chance of a lifetime - a fantasy like winning the lottery had come true for me.

What would they have bought given the opportunity? The males in my audience who are crazy about cars can easily relate to my passion for a certain type of vehicle. They come along with me for the ride. They relive the long drive around the United States and are horrified along with me to see the car smashed. They thrill at the forbidden daring of the high speed goodbye to the car. They enjoy the irony of the conclusion of my tale.

More importantly, students witness an illustration of how storytelling relates to giving presentations. The same elements are at work. The story is one that interests the audience - it has a beginning, middle and end - there is suspense and the story problem is solved. Together we note all of the things that the storyteller can do to enhance the story - engaging the audience with gesture, facial expression, tone of voice, body language, pace, and so forth. All of these elements are also needed in effective presenting.