"The most beautiful car ever made" - Enzo Ferrari
"I want that car and I want it now!" - Frank Sinatra
"Every car that came before and every one that has happened since is irrelevant." - James Elliott, Classic & Sports Car
When I was fifteen, I visited my dad at his work place. He was doing very important things at the forefront of computing. He had a to-do pad on his desk and, while he was out of his office making coffee (or, more likely, finding someone to make it for us), I wrote on it 'Buy Daughter an E-Type Jag'. He said nothing about it and I presumed he hadn't seen it, or just tossed it in the bin, but he came home from work the next week with a Matchbox Jaguar E-Type, which remains one of my most treasured possessions.
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| Matchbox E-Type Jags |
When I got married, I added one to the wedding present list, and I received a beautiful model of a silver Series 3 coupe. It was exquisite, right down to the gleaming spokes of the wheels. Clearly, we were getting closer. Him Outdoors arranged one as our wedding car, and we had one booked, but the week before, the owner phoned us to tell us that it had failed its MOT and couldn't be on the road. He offered us an Austin Healey as a replacement. As if. Him Outdoors had had one job. (As it turned out, we got a launch which ferried us up and down The Thames while we had a bottle of champagne and crossed the county border in style, so all was marvellous.)
The Jaguar E-Type is a British sports car that was manufactured by Jaguar Cars Ltd between 1961 and 1975. Launched at the Geneva show in March 1961, it was designed by former aeronautics engineer, Malcolm Sayer, who had previously worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company during World War II. It was fast: 150 mph top speed and 0-60 mph in under seven seconds, and it had a range of features that made it exceptional.
- Unitary construction: a method of fabricating vehicles where the body, floor pan and chasis are built on one unit, resulting in high performance torsional rigidity
- All-steel monocoque, which offers high fuel efficiency due to low weight: the whole structure is an outer shell (monocoque meaning 'single shell' in French) which provides better space efficiency and crash protection
- Disc brakes: the E-Type had them on all wheels, at a time when few mass-produced cars did
- Rack and pinion steering
- Front and rear suspension: double wishbones at the front, wishbones and twin coil/ damper units at the rear
Okay, so maybe I looked most of that up (although I did know it was fast for the time), because if I'm honest, I'm not all that interested in the specific features. What thrills me is the looks. This is simply the most spectacular thing on wheels. I'm far from alone in thinking so. In March 2008, the Jaguar E-Type ranked first in the Daily Telegraph list on the world's 100 most beautiful cars of all time. That may be the only time I agree with that paper.
The New York City Museum of Modern Art has six cars in its permanent design collection, and the Jaguar E-Type is one of them. The others are a Cicistalia 202GT, Jeep, Smartcar, Volkswagen Beetle and F1 Racing Car (Ferrari 641), which may have historical and cultural significance, but they haven't got equivalent style. In 2018 James Elliott wrote in Classic & Sports Car, "The Jaguar E-type is the most commonly desired car in the world. Period. Even car-haters swoon in its presence and, if you ever want to be taken seriously as a classic car dealer, you must have one on your forecourt."
It's hard to argue with that design and those vital statistics: length of 14ft, 8in; counterbalanced by width of 5ft, 5in. It looks as though it was designed by a human to appeal to our artistic and aesthetic instincts, rather than by a computer to appeal to power-to-weight ratios and wind-tunnel performance. It was both. There were 72,500 of all types built and, according to Elliott, "the E-type is the barometer of the entire classic car market and has been since day one."
Finally keeping a promise and completing his job (seventeen years on; who says we have to keep nagging - things will be accomplished eventually), for my birthday last year, Him Outdoors hired one for the day. It was amazing, and a little bit terrifying. I was overwhelmed by my dreams coming true, and by the slightly erratic nature of the beast.
By modern standards of power steering, the directional motion is tough. The bonnet is so long that you sometimes have to nudge out of a side-road before you can actually see what's coming. There are no wing mirrors and the view from the rear mirror is limited.The engine wants to let rip - this really is a powerful cat - and it can be strenuous to control that surge. She has modern tyres that grip the road (apparently not as thrilling to racing drivers who enjoy the thrill of high-speed cornering on tiptoe), but if you're not going quickly enough around a corner, she will wander a fraction to try and hint who's boss. She can smell fear.
Bearing all that in mind, I took a couple of turns around the carpark, and was content to let Him Outdoors do the lion's share of the driving. I took the photos (we were in Cambridgeshire; a land of thatched houses, village greens and picturesque pubs) and watched the people watching us. We had been told that people would make way for us and let us into traffic. They did. We had been told that people would smile and wave as everyone loves an E-Type Jag (only the Jensen Interceptor receives a fraction of the interest according to the bloke who rented it to us). They did.
We had been told that people would want to stop and talk to us about the car. They did. We had stopped at the roadside because I wanted to take picture of the car against the ploughed fields and the sunset. A chap pulled up alongside us and asked if we needed any help. He said that he used to own an E-Type and, seeing one stopped at the side of the road brought back memories of his multiple breakdowns. We had a chat and he could barely take his eyes off her. I don't blame him.
In an article for GQ entitled, The A-Z of the Jaguar E-Type: a 1960s icon that's never out of style, Marc McLaren wrote that the E-Type was "as integral a part of the Swinging Sixties as Mary Quant miniskirts and Mod suits". It's also timeless. In 2017 an E-Type Zero was used as a wedding car by Prince Harry and the new Duchess of Sussex - what've they got that we haven't...? It's an electric version of a 1968 Series 1.5 Jaguar E-Type Roadster. Buyers could either provide their own donor vehicle for conversion or let Jaguar Classic source a donor car to be rebuilt - the BYO price was quoted as GBP60,000.
It would be a shame to lose that engine, but it's more environmentally conscious, although development was halted in November 2019, and no further explanation appears to be forthcoming. Meanwhile, she sounds sensational; that cat-like purr is content for now, but it contains a suggestion of power, just waiting to be unleashed. I am utterly smitten.
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| "If it's not an E-type Jag; it's just a car." - Me |
