The Jaguar E-Type brought Le Mans racing engineering to the open road
When Jaguar unveiled the E-Type on 15 March 1961, it offered a claimed 150 mph and 0 to 60 in under seven seconds at a competitive price. Enzo Ferrari supposedly called it the most beautiful car ever made. Whether or not he did, New York's Museum of Modern Art later added one to its permanent collection.
Its bloodline came from the track. Jaguar's D-Type had won the Le Mans 24 Hours three years running from 1955, and the racing department was asked to build a road car in the same spirit to replace the XK150. Chief engineer William Heynes designed the first prototype in 1957. Instead of a separate ladder chassis, a front subframe carrying engine and suspension bolted straight onto the body tub, so early cars weighed only 1,315 kilograms.
The engineering pushed the industry. Independent suspension at both ends, rack-and-pinion steering and four-wheel disc brakes, the rear pair mounted inboard, all became talking points. Early cars used the triple-carburettor 3.8-litre six; from 1965 a 4.2-litre version kept the same 265 horsepower but raised torque by 18 percent. Autocar clocked a 4.2 coupé at 153 mph in May 1965 and called it the fastest car the magazine had ever tested.
Production ran from 1961 to 1974 through three series, with coupé, convertible and, from 1966, a longer 2+2. American safety and emissions rules brought bigger grilles and bumpers, and in 1968 twin Zenith-Stromberg carburettors trimmed output there to 246 horsepower. Later cars also got larger radiators, since the originals had a reputation for overheating.
Collectors now pay heavily. A 1961 flat-floor Series 1 fetched 528,000 dollars in 2014, and one of only a dozen Lightweight competition cars sold for 7,370,000 dollars at Scottsdale in 2017. In 1996 MoMA made a blue roadster one of just six cars in its design collection. Jaguar even built an all-electric E-Type revival in 2017, with a 40 kWh battery and a range of 168 miles, but dropped plans to sell it in 2019.
Source: Jaguar E-Type
