New York City is one of those cities where you can live your whole life and never need a driver’s license. For George Sweeper, his family didn’t own a car and he can’t recall even being in someone else’s until he went away to college in Washington DC. Of course, he had spent some time in taxi cabs and he really enjoyed taking rides down 5th Avenue in a double decker bus with his mother. But it was a little later in life that a road trip in a girlfriend’s E-Type Jaguar ignited a 47-year love affair with “the most beautiful car ever made”.
George says first and foremost that he is attracted to the lines of a car. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that the more ‘sporty’ cars he has owned have all been European. When he graduated college in Washington DC, he took the money he had from a part time job, and the monetary gifts he received from graduation, and bought a 1958 Austin Healey 100-6. In doing so, he became the first person in his family to ever own a car. That particular car was later stolen, and George used the insurance money to purchase another beautiful European car - a 1964 Austin Healey 3000.
A few years later he started dating one of his college alumni who owned a yellow E-Type Jaguar. After driving it from DC to New York and then on to Vermont for a ski trip, he had to have one. He began his hunt searching the New York Times Automobile Classified Section. He knew that you could pick up the Sunday Edition around 8pm on a Saturday night, which gave him a 10- to 12-hour head start on his competition.
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