Octane Magazine heeft een mooi item gemaakt over de E-type. http://www.classicandperformancecar.com ... etype.html
The greatest car of all time. The most iconic classic ever. Sensational. Unique. Ahead of its time. Take your pick; every description is fair. The Jaguar E-type is still lauded decades since its launch at the Parc des Eaux Vives in Geneva on 15 March 1961. It stunned the world with its futuristic and curvaceous styling, advanced specifications and real-world price of £2256, the equivalent today of £38,000. Not much for a Ferrari-baiter.
To say that the automotive press was shocked at the first sighting of the E-type Jaguar is an understatement. Malcolm Sayer’s bodywork was unlike that of any motor car seen before; it remains achingly beautiful yet is absolutely functional. Sayer was not a stylist but an aerodynamicist who designed the E-type according to mathematical principle with the help of calculus and a sliderule. This was purely form following function and the result is so pleasing, so elegant and completely beautiful, the only other mechanical object that comes close is the Supermarine Spitfire, another of Britain’s true heroes.
The design, engineering and creation of the E-type was a huge move forward for the automotive industry during the decade in which Neil Armstrong declared, as he set foot on the moon: ‘That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.’ The Swinging Sixties were a time of revolution, liberation and innovation, and the E-type was right up there leading the changes. It made the Aston Martin DB4 look like a truck, the Bentley S2 like a lorry and Ferraris of the period – with live rear axles, cart springs and drum brakes – simply crude. And Lamborghini? Ferruccio was still building tractors in ’61.
As many collectors and commentators have opined, the E-type’s two principal failings are that 72,000 were built – and they were built down to a price. If the E were as rare as a Ferrari 250GT SWB (167 made) or Aston DB4 (1113 made), its value would be ten times what a decent example commands today. Obviously, from Jaguar’s point of view, being a sales success was good news and the country as a whole benefited from the massive export drive to America. Ubiquity and snobbery have held the E-type Jaguar down but now, as we celebrate the great sports car’s 50th anniversary, classic car connoisseurs have finally realised quite what a special machine it actually is.
‘Driving should be a joy, not a chore,’ said Sir William Lyons, founder of Jaguar. Let’s put his statement to the test. Sunday, 5.30am, central London, the dawn of what turns out to be the hottest day of the year so far. And also the coolest.
You walk towards the low and lithe form of the E-type Jaguar parked in a bay at the rear of a London garage. Swing open the door, which feels dainty and small. The aperture necessitates a wriggle but, once you’re ensconced, the driver’s seat is soft and comfortable, the legroom ample if lacking in width. Insert the ignition key, slide the choke a fraction, turn the key, allow the fuel pump to prime the triple SU carburettors, then thumb the black starter button. The six-cylinder engine fires quietly and idles cleanly.
Swinging out onto the deserted city streets you notice the light and immediate steering through the thin wooden rim (the only wood in the cockpit). The clutch is smooth and light; the action of the still-cold gearbox easy. But what you really notice is the young couple heading home after a night’s partying. They stop, mouths agape as the Carmen Red E hoves into view. The girl points, then jumps up and down, waving and squealing with delight as the man grapples with his mobile phone camera. The quietly burbling E-type has that effect on everyone who sees it. Joy is infectious and, man, does it feel good.
The car you see here is neither the first nor the rarest E-type but simply one of the best. It’s a 1966 Series 1 4.2 roadster, which makes it the nicest-driving of E-types thanks to ongoing improvements implemented by Jaguar during the model’s evolution. The earliest Series 1 3.8 roadsters are prized for their purity and rarity but, though they are the best to look at, the 4.2, launched in 1964, is the better to drive. This is thanks to the 3.8’s antiquated, crunchy Moss gearbox being replaced by a slick all-synchro job, as well as a much better braking system, improved engine cooling and much more comfortable seats. In addition, the lusty 4235cc six-cylinder engine is absolutely fantastic: quiet, well-behaved, torquey and powerful, stonking out an easy 265bhp (so it was claimed, though nearer 240 in reality) at 5500rpm, with 216lb ft of torque at 4000rpm.
As the E-type warms you allow it to rev a little more down the empty streets. The magnificent 4.2-litre twin-overhead-cam engine – derived from a Le Mans-winner’s, no less – remains superlative and you think this is the best thing about this impressive sports car. It even looks gorgeous, but you soon appreciate that the rest of the E-type’s impressive specification is more than up to the task.
The slimline yet beautiful E-type weighs just 1250kg – today Porsche’s 2.9-litre Boxster weighs 1335kg – thanks to its D-type-derived tub and complex construction. With the strong engine hardly breaking a sweat to haul such a lightweight chassis, no wonder the E-type is super-responsive and fabulously accelerative.
You snuggle down and start to enjoy the dynamics. With the soft top furled, the long tunnels under the City of London are a pleasure as the growl of the engine reverberates off the walls. Snick the gearbox into third, add some juice and the E’s quiet burble morphs into a hard snarl.
Fly a bit too quickly into a roundabout, dab the powerful disc brakes and chuck the E into the turn. Let the body lean on the soft-set suspension and allow it to take up the roll; it settles, then you squirt it around on the throttle. Quite what a driver of 1966 would have made of this easy and crushing performance is actually well recorded. As The Autocar noted in 1967: ‘This Jaguar Roadster is unique. Its performance, ex-works price, steering, roadholding, tractability, economy, comfort and good looks may be matched by other sports or GT cars but none of them has the lot.’ Well put.
The slightly more purple Car & Driver scribbled in 1965: ‘It’s like that woman you used to love, the one you’d never waste another minute on. You can avoid her for months but one night she calls and you’d crawl naked across three hundred yard of flaming gasoline and broken bottles to get to her… it’s a Jaguar. It reeks of purest automotive erotica.’ Henry Manney added that the E-type was ‘the greatest crumpet-catcher known to man’.
I say, steady on; this is a sports car designed and engineered by chaps with short-back-and-sides haircuts, who smoke pipes and wear sensible grey suits. Well, apart from Norman Dewis, the bootlace-tied Jaguar test driver.
The more you drive the E-type in the modern world, the more you marvel at its, well, its modernity. It is superb. The steering has that light immediacy no car of today can touch. The engine is fluid, smooth and utterly beguiling. The brakes work well, the gearbox is wrist-flick light, and the fully independent suspension is soft and absorbent. This car, generously loaned by classic car dealer Peter Bradfield, is an absolutely stock example. It is essentially a new E-type exactly as it left the factory in 1966. This is because it is a 100-point concours-winner, so everything down to the last decal is as it should be. So no little mechanical tweaks here or improvements there: this example is as pure as the local village virgin, to use completely the wrong analogy.
So why am I mildly surprised when it starts every time in the heat as the photographer insists on moving it a couple of inches one way or another for every photograph? The Smiths temperature gauge moves up towards 80 degrees and the electric fan cuts in, no problem, and all the controls remain sweet and light all day. Early Series 1 E-types got a reputation for unreliability, largely in America where their cooling system was not adequate. And, yes, the old-fashioned Moss gearbox was at odds with the car’s otherwise thoroughly modern demeanour. Sir William Lyons was a notorious penny-pincher and the component suppliers were ruthlessly squeezed, so fittings such as Lucas electrics and dynamos soon earned the ‘Prince of Darkness’ moniker.
Being affordable and numerous, after their first flush of exciting youth many E-types fell into banger status, so were neglected and allowed to deteriorate. Criticism continued about the overly soft suspension and brakes, probably because the strong engine could still deliver 140mph speeds that a worn-out chassis couldn’t readily contain. The E-type is a complex car and the front subframe and rear suspension deteriorate, so tired old dogs feel loose and sloppy to drive.
Not so with this perfect example. It shows how structurally taut a good E can be. It has the full 150mph urge and the pliant yet controlled chassis to handle it all with elegance and ease. The best trait is that the E-type does it all with cool understated Englishness. Unlike over-excited Italian sports cars of the period, or noisy German ones for that matter, the E always remains calm yet still very fast. And very beautiful.
The Swinging Sixties really only began late in 1966, as Britain was still broken by World War Two – it’s amazing to think that the E-type was actually conceived in the frumpy 1950s. Sir William Lyons was looking to replace the XK, itself launched in 1948 as the fastest sports car on the road. In the intervening years, Jaguar dominated on the racetrack, especially at the Le Mans 24 Hours, with the C- and D-types.
The first prototype E-type was E1A, completed in 1957. It was masterminded by chief engineer Bill Heynes, built in lightweight aluminium with a central monocoque and exotic magnesium framework, and powered by a 2.4-litre straight-six. Its main purpose was to test engineer Bob Knight’s independent suspension, which would contribute to future Jaguars’ reputation for excellent ride comfort. Racing driver Briggs Cunningham saw the second E-type development car, E2A, and persuaded Jaguar to allow him to campaign it at Le Mans in 1960. With steel bodywork and a 3.0-litre engine, E2A set the fastest lap at La Sarthe and ran as high as third before retiring. This led directly to the unveiling of the first E-type fixed-head coupe at Geneva in 1961.
Pandemonium ensued as the crowds clamoured to view this otherworldly car. Test driver Bob Berry drove the sole coupe demonstrator, 9600 HP, from Coventry to Geneva and soon the media scrum to have a go up the nearby hillclimb course overwhelmed the Jaguar team, so Norman Dewis was called and instructed to bring the roadster demonstrator, 77 RW – and never mind that he’d been conducting high-speed testing in the car all day. He left Browns Lane at 7.45pm, arriving just before 9.30 next morning, eight minutes ahead of schedule. Lyons’ singular comment was ‘Well done Dewis, you made it.’
Dewis was pressed straight into service demonstrating the E-type up the hillclimb. Despite his fatigue he was the fastest man up the hill, much to the annoyance of the Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz teams also running there. Exactly one month later an E-type won its first race at Oulton Park with Graham Hill behind the wheel.
It was the work of the finest engineering team of the time, led by that great stylist and marketeer Sir William Lyons, who had previously wowed the world with the launch of the beautiful XK120 in 1948. Only Mercedes-Benz could compete, with its advanced but tricky-handling and super-expensive Gullwing. BMW’s stylish 507 was outclassed by the Jaguar’s effortless performance, as was Ferrari’s 250GT Lusso.
Jaguar did its advanced engineering on the racetrack, pulverising the opposition with newfangled disc brakes (first seen on the Le Mans-winning C-type and then fitted to the roadgoing XK150), then with the aerodynamics and lightweight structure of the even more successful D-type. The E-type benefited from this development, receiving the well-proven XK engine in triple-carburettor 265bhp guise, plus leading-edge disc brakes. Its D-type-style monocoque tub had a front subframe attached that contained the engine and independent front suspension, which incorporated wishbones and torsion bars. The rear suspension was even more advanced and nothing like the D-type’s solid axle, with a rear subframe that houses the differential and inboard disc brakes, and fully independent suspension with trailing arms and lower transverse links, fixed-length driveshafts, twinned coil springs and telescopic dampers plus an anti-roll bar. This was racing car technology available at a third of the price of less-sophisticated rivals.
Enzo Ferrari is reputed to have muttered: ‘The Jaguar E-type is the most beautiful car ever made.’ Then he proceeded to develop his road cars to match up to the E’s dynamic ability. Sales success in the crucial American market was assured when the E-type was unveiled in New York in April 1961. Frank Sinatra, crooner and member of the Rat Pack, took one look at the E and said ‘I want that car and I want it now…’
The E-type remained in production for 14 years and sold more than 72,000, of which only 12,000 were earmarked for Britain. It evolved into a 2+2 bodystyle, the straight-six made way for a V12 in 1971, and 12 special Lightweight versions were built for racing. Yet, as with many British marques, the E-type suffered because it remained in production for too long. The cars became outdated, underpowered and heavy, and the shining icon was finally tarnished when Jaguar was subsumed by that communist leviathan otherwise known as British Leyland.
What astonishes most about the E-type today is that good examples remain far more affordable than comparable rivals. Powering through London with the delicate wood-rimmed steering wheel in your hand, the view of the city ahead of you over that long bonnet with its evocative power bulge, and the creamy music of the 4.2-litre six in your ears, you realise that driving gets no better than this, no matter what the decade, swinging or otherwise. The Jaguar E-type is one cool car.
Thanks to Peter Bradfield Ltd of Kensington, London, UK, +44 (0)20 7589 8787, http://www.bradfieldcars.com.
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Reactie van een lezer die 37 jaar eigenaar was van die auto in 't artikel:
The E-Type shown in this wonderful article was mine for 37 years here in the States until I sold it at auction last year. I was about 20 years old when my Dad and I found it in a field. Suffice to say, selling her was like losing one of my arms, but I am very glad that she is being driven and treated royally back in the UK where she belongs. Again, thank you for the wonderful article. I hope I get a chance to stay in touch with the new owner.
Additional photos can be seen at http://jagxke.wordpress.com
Regards,
Patrick McLoad, USA
