CarBrandLogos archive · Jaguar · 1961

JaguarE-Type

A racing car's aerodynamics and independent rear suspension, at half a Ferrari's price.

Photo: DeFacto · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Jaguar history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Jaguar E-Type, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Jaguar had stopped racing at the end of 1956, and the D-Type that won Le Mans three times had nowhere left to go. What its aerodynamicist, Malcolm Sayer, did next was apply the same method — he worked from mathematics rather than modelling clay — to a road car. The E-Type shown at Geneva in March 1961 was the result, and it was not a styling exercise: the long nose, the small frontal area and the tapering tail were all there to reduce drag.

1963 Jaguar XK-E Roadster

Design and engineering

Beneath the skin it was more advanced than almost anything at the price. A monocoque tub carried a tubular subframe for the engine at the front; the rear suspension was fully independent, mounted in its own subframe, with inboard disc brakes — a layout Jaguar would keep using for two decades. The 3.8-litre XK six was familiar, but the chassis around it was not, and the car's roadholding was widely reported as being in a different class from its contemporaries.

Jaguar Goodwood Hill · Surreal Name Given · CC BY 2.0

In production

Then there was the money. The E-Type cost roughly half what a comparable Ferrari or Aston Martin did while claiming similar performance, and Jaguar's press cars — famously prepared with unusual care — demonstrated 150 mph to a receptive motoring press. Whether a standard car would do the same has been argued about ever since; the point at the time was that nobody else offered anything remotely comparable for the price.

61 Jaguar E-Type · Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA · CC BY 2.0

Legacy

It stayed in production, in three series, until 1974. The 4.2-litre engine of 1964 brought a much better gearbox and more usable torque; a longer 2+2 coupé arrived for buyers with children; the Series 2 of 1968 adapted the car to American safety and emissions rules, losing the covered headlamps and gaining bigger bumpers and more cooling; and the Series 3 of 1971 fitted Jaguar's new V12 to a lengthened floorpan, restoring performance the emissions equipment had taken away.

Chapter 5

Lightweight competition versions ran at Le Mans and in British club racing, though the E-Type was never a real answer to a Ferrari 250 GTO. Its life was mostly on the road and in the culture around it — a car so bound up with 1960s Britain that it has been shorthand for the decade ever since. The Museum of Modern Art in New York holds one in its permanent collection, and Enzo Ferrari is generally credited with calling it the most beautiful car ever made, though nobody has ever pinned down where he said it.