"Brian Whatcott" wrote

I must be biassed. I ran an XKE of that vintage for 5 years without a
mentionable electrical snag.

Your experiences are typical. I mechaniced at Brit car dealers and rode
Brit "skooters" in those days. We had no more trouble with Lucas than other
brands. In fact some replaced their Euro and early Japanese stuff with
Lucas for better reliability.

Electronics are weird. Theoretically, there's no reason for a transistor or
diode to fail, but they do; so often that the telco used tube (valve) type
amplifiers in undersea cables. So, as wiring, et cetera, age we see problems
that never occurred when the cars were new and often nobody knows why.

Wire and other manufacturers made a big leap in materials and QA about the
time Japan's industries became prominent and much of their legendary
reliability can be traced to this vs anything uniquely Japanese (ie,
American, Brit and Euro electrics got better about the same time). Most
early Japanese wiring harnesses were "manufactured" by old grandmothers in
1000 seperate home basements using plywood patterns with wire colors penned
on them in color - hardly high tech but equally good, and even better if
grandma had better insulated and tempered wires..

My dream car? An early XKE coupe with a 450 HP 427 Ford ......