SR Supporting The Ever Changing Classic Car Climate

External influences occasionally are motivation for new product development. Whilst our primary drivers are improving car performance sometimes at Swallows Racing, we also have the dual influences of solving limited part supply or offering more cost-effective solutions to parts that have become overly expensive for one reason or another. These reasons can include world events that disrupt the normal supply chains such as Covid, the Ukraine war and high prices of global traded commodities.

Catalytic converts are a prime example of a car component that is both affected by limited supply and price sensitive rare metals that are used in the construction of ‘cats’ which often include, Platinum, Palladium, and Rhodium. Platinum prices have fluctuated between $878 and $1044 in the past 12 months, Palladium and Rhodium prices have seen even greater fluctuations. Platinum is also used in spark plugs and lambda sensors. OEM, X100 catalytic convertors are now at best scarce and expensive or not obtainable, and this is where Swallows Racing offers a solution with our performance sports cats. We highlighted sports cats in our article last month (February) on pages 82 & 83 and listed which models we offer our 300-cell sports range for. 

At the time of writing this, president Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has just had a spat with Donald Trump and his vice-president JD Vance in the Oval Office. You might ask what has this to do with car parts? Well, an awful lot, because a high portion of rare earth minerals (approx. 5%) comes from Ukraine, and if you were cynical, you might argue that’s why both Russia and the USA are so interested in the country. Platinum is amongst the minerals that are mined in Ukraine, but graphite, titanium, lithium, copper, lead, zinc, silver, nickel, cobalt and manganese are more abundant, many of these minerals end up in car components and vehicle production. A lot of the mineral reserves and mines are however in the now Russian occupied areas in Eastern Ukraine. This has a direct influence on supply and price of car components. 

Finding a solution to the issues caused by outside influence is not easy, however it necessary to the future of the Jaguar community and to keep our cars on the road. We strongly believe that innovation, research and development are key. Swallows Racing has been pushing the design ceiling of what is possible for the last few years. With the use of technology and working with trusted partners we have solved a lot of short stock, high price, difficult to source and supply chain issues. At the same time, we believe we have created components that are superior to the OEM originals and that are in many cases are cheaper as well. We have covered in the last few months in these articles a wide range of parts demonstrating the significant upgrades and potential savings that can be made when using the Swallows performance range, over the OEM versions.

Let’s look at a good example, the caster arm wishbones for the X150 models. The OEM’s are £481.05 + VAT per side due to only being able as the whole arm which we feel is unnecessary, that’s a whopping £1154.52 inc VAT for both. We advocate replacing the failed bushes with Powerflex poly bushes, these bushes are £106.20 inc VAT for both, a massive saving of over £1000 and we believe a vastly improved driving feel and a component with a lifetime guarantee. 

An example of Swallows Racing innovation is the range of dampers and coilover packages we have developed, and track tested, working with AVO Technics. Let’s look at the shocks and springs on an X100 model. If you needed to replace all the components in this task, then the cost of the OEM parts is currently £6,628.50 +VAT. Incredible especially when you consider that you are buying technology that is 25 years old at this point. Swallows Racings solution is to fit modern day coilovers that mimic the design and utilise the OEM upper and lower damper mountings and can be rebuilt and serviced, when necessary, unlike the OEM Bilstein dampers which are not serviceable. The added benefit of the AVO Technics units is they also give you ride height adjustability and enable the user to tailor the bump and rebound of the shocks for completely personal ride quality. The AVO Technics GTZ dampers and springs are just £1264.18 +VAT – saving you over £5,300 +VAT. 

Another example, Swallows Racing silicone throttle body intake joiners, which were something we talked about in the January edition of the magazine on pages 84 & 85, again the savings on these is massive over buying OEM, using our throttle intake joiners the savings can be over £600 +VAT.

We are also looking at sophisticated electronics and how we offer modern solutions that boost performance and longevity. For example, stand-alone ECU’s and offering options for dying technology meaning that we are less reliant on discontinued or over expensive genuine options. We want to be part of the solution to keeping modern classic Jaguars on the road and helping this community. We strongly believe in our race to road, track tested component technology. 

We have invested significant amounts, committing thousands of components to stock in the last couple of years, so most of our Swallows Racing range is available off the shelf and available for next day delivery by DHL. We also have purchase options online including PayPal Credit.

The online shop has recently been updated so do take a look. –  https://swallows-jag.co.uk/select/