Background
It’s taken as fact that Enzo Ferrari once declared the E Type to be the most beautiful car ever built.
It’s probably apocryphal.
Either way, the E Type is inevitably in everyone’s top three of the best-looking cars ever made, boasting inch-perfect lines, curves that would put Jessica Rabbit in the shade, some of the best engines in the business, and about half a mile of quite suggestive (in a Freudian way) bonnet.
The car was first launched in 1961, just 16 years after the end of the war.
So, young guns who’d dreamed of flying Spitfires when they were children in 1945 were almost guaranteed to fall head over heels for a car that looked like a fighter plane from the outside and had a cockpit and dashboard that would have made any baroquely-moustachioed and Brylcreemed RAF pilot feel right at home.
Their fathers would have been bank managers or family doctors, worn tweed and brogues, smoked a briar pipe, and driven an Alvis or a Riley.
But this next generation were architects, advertising executives or designers. They wore slip-ons and turtle-necks, smoked Rothmans filter tipped, had at least heard of things like garlic and olive oil and, if they were cooler than cool, they drove an E Type.
It’s hard to believe, but in March 2021 the Jaguar E-Type was 60 years old.
Offered initially with the gorgeous 3.8-litre straight-six engine that developed a heady 265bhp, the Jaguar was an economically democratic car for all its potent sexual symbolism and mouth-watering performance.
Its list price was £2096 for the coupé - the equivalent of just over £30,000 in today’s money - which even its detractors (yes, there were a few of those, believe it or not) had to admit was an absolute bargain. Interestingly, the roadster was about £100 less than the coupé.
Its engine capacity grew to 4.2-litres in 1964, at which point the Jag started to go as well as it looked. The changes also included bigger disc brakes and an all-synchromesh gearbox. The so-called 1½ Series cars arrived in 1967 and the main changes were that the headlights now lacked the Perspex covers of the first cars, they featured twin Stromberg carbs, and the eared spinners on the wire wheels were now hexagonal.
The Series 2 cars lasted between 1968 and 1971. This iteration grew larger bumpers, relocated its rear lights and gained a new, safer interior.
Introduced to the range in 1966, the 2+2 body added nine inches to the wheelbase and considerable practicality to the car, thus expanding its potential ownership market.
The coupé was still available as a two-seater, something that was to change with the introduction of the series 3 cars in ’71. Thereafter, all coupés would be 2+2.
The Series 3 cars spanned 1971 through to its death in 1975. The 2+2 was now the only coupé on offer and a 5.3-litre V12 engine sat beneath the bonnet.
