Background
Invariably in everyone’s top three of the best-looking cars ever made (and for Enzo Ferrari it famously took the number one spot), the Jaguar E Type boasts inch-perfect lines, 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 men (and women) 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 fulsomely-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 execs or designers, wore slip-ons and turtle-necks, smoked Rothmans filter tipped and, if they were very lucky, 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 develops a heady 265bhp, the Jaguar was a 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. It also benefitted from bigger disc brakes and an all-synchromesh gearbox.
Production of this iteration of Series 1 didn’t last long before it was superseded, so these are relatively rare cars.
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 model grew larger bumpers, relocated its rear lights and gained a new and 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.
Introduced in 1971, the Series 3 cars featured a new, more powerful and efficient engine. The 5.3-litre V12 unit went on to produce anything from 242bhp to 295bhp, depending on emission controls and compression ratios, but was introduced with a claimed 272bhp and the grunt to propel the car to 60mph in under 7 seconds.
The shorter FHC body style was dropped, leaving the Series 3 available in just two iterations: an OTS (Open Two Seater) roadster or a 2+2 coupé. The final production E-Type OTS roadster rolled off the production line in June 1974.
Trainee E Type spotters should know that a Series 3 may be quickly discerned from its predecessors if it displays the voluminous cross-slatted front grille, flared wheel arches, wider tyres, four exhaust tips and a badge on the boot declaring it to be a V12.
Purists will tell you that the Series 1 3.8-litre is the car to have, ideally with a flat floor.
This makes perfect sense if you are 4ft 7inches tall, are an accomplished contortionist, have tiny feet, and don’t like your driving experiences to be overly enjoyable.
If you live in the real world and prefer your iconic British sportscars to be capable of braking, steering and driving with some degree of finesse and reliability, then the Series 3 is the car for you.
And this one goes about the business of braking, steering and driving better than any E Type we’ve yet encountered.
