J.K. Jackson: A longtime friend to us and the classic car world

I try to keep these columns light and hopefully fun. Years ago, I swore that I would never get preachy. After all, who the hell am I to tell you what to do?

I’ll apologize in advance as this one is going to get a little sad and perhaps preachy. You see, one of my longtime friends just passed away. 

I met J.K. Jackson in the mid-’80s, probably at one of the early autocross events I attended. When I gravitated to racing Triumphs in the late ’80s and started vintage racing them in the mid-’90s, we became inseparable.

We built cars together. We shared my black TR3 for more than 10 years.

Thanks to his decades of racing experience, he initially beat me. Badly. But rather than boast, he coached me and taught me how to be a better racer. I improved, first matching his lap times and, eventually, besting him.

Was he jealous? Hell no. He was proud that he’d built a car with me and taught me how to get to the front of the pack.

A decade ago, when my dad passed, he was there and like a second father to me. Since then–and this is one of the things that has me so ticked–our relationship had faded some. I still called him once in a while, but things were different. He had gotten older and had had some health issues. While he proclaimed a continued interest in racing the TR3 with me, every time we planned something, it didn’t happen. 

And I guess I got busier with other stuff, too. A knee replacement, the pandemic and new projects kept pushing racing the TR3 aside.

While this happens to many of us, how can we be such good friends with someone for decades and then have things slowly (or quickly in some cases) change? 

In addition to the emotional void that I’m still wrapping my head around, there’s a loss of knowledge when someone like J.K. passes. While he was (usually) very forthcoming when queried about how to build an overdrive or time a Triumph engine, as an actual rocket scientist, he did not suffer fools–at all!

Some of the legends in our world, like J.K., shared their knowledge while they were alive. Others did not. What a shame.

Another mutual friend, Steve Eckerich, has been wrestling with rotary engine experts like Jim Downing, Roger Mandeville and John Finger to learn their tricks. One of the best, Racing Beat’s Jim Mederer, left this planet almost a decade ago.

The third part of this rant has to do with the stuff that J.K. and others like him leave behind. Nearly a decade ago, I nudged J.K. about all the clutter that had built up in his workshop. I offered to come up and help him get the place cleaned and organized: what to keep, what to finish and what to rehome.

I even made a rather extravagant offer for his Group 44 Inc. Triumph TR6 race car that he hadn’t raced since the ’70s. My offers for both the car and the help were rejected.

My interest in the car was primarily to get it out of the dusty, dank workshop and back into the limelight with him behind the wheel at least one more time. If I restored it, I figured, we could drive it together. We’d already made one trip together to Monterey in the Group 44 Inc. GT6 we restored, so how cool would it have been to come back with the TR6?

Alas, it was not to be. Half of me thinks he was worried that I and others would steal his hoard, but looking back, I think the real reason he wouldn’t sell anything or even let us help him was a fear of his own mortality. (Although I tend to be an organized collector–at least by the classic definition, I’m not a hoarder–I know many who are not.)

As I knew would most likely be my fate, J.K.’s widow has asked another mutual friend, J.C. Osteen, and me to evaluate all the treasures J.K. left behind. 

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