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E Type Jaguar
George and Maryanne Kear’s 1966 4.2 litre 2+2 Coupe Words Greg Price, photos Kevin Clarkson, Greg Price
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hey reckon that if you want to keep an idiot interested in the short term, you give him a piece of paper with ‘Please turn over’ printed on both sides. Editor Kev, on the other hand, knows that if you want to keep this scribe interested in the long term, you promise him an E Type Jaguar to write about. And that’s exactly what he did. I doubt that there would be anyone out there who dates from my era who has not lusted after an E Type Jaguar at some stage and I’m sure that many of you still do. Even if you have not been up close and personal with one it is not hard to understand their attraction. (The E Types, not the blokes lusting after them.) And, whether you like it or not, here’s some background on the beast. (Beast? Jaguar – get it?) March 16 1961, when I was still at boarding school in Auckland, the Geneva Motor Show on the other side of the globe opened its doors to the public and it became obvious that the star of the show was going to be Jaguar’s new 150mph E Type sports car which was unveiled in coupe form. My boarding school’s library 22 Beaded Wheels
had limited reading for the English car fans, but there was a preponderance of Saturday Evening Posts, which had those memorable advertisements for American cars, so anything British had to be pretty striking to divert my attention away from (for example) 1959 Cadillacs. The new E Type certainly did this for the younger schoolboys who (mostly) did not know what ‘phallic shape’ meant, but all were certainly in awe of the modernistic lines and claimed performance. I mean the E Type looked like it was going 150mph even when it was parked. My first glimpse of one, albeit in 35mm form, was at the local picture theatre on a Saturday afternoon during the intermission commercials. The E Types began sporting some of the more humorous bumper stickers, including my all-time favourite, “Running in, Please Pass. It may be the only opportunity you’ll ever get.” Maybe not so relevant now, but in the 1960s and 1970s if an E Type had passed my Mark I Zephyr when I was going flat out, I’d have probably thought that I’d stopped
and then got out to see why – such was the speed differential. The E Type was developed from the C Type and D Type racers, and it’s not hard to see why. Sir William Lyons was one of the British motor industry’s outstanding personalities, and was the creator of the SS and Jaguar marques. Sir William was reportedly curiously ambivalent about the E Type, possibly because he thought it may not sell in the same numbers as did his saloons. Of the two body styles he much preferred the closed version. At £2,196 it was £99 more expensive than the roadster. Like the open car it was an uncompromising two-seater but there was a roomy luggage platform with access by a rear-opening door. It was reportedly slightly faster than the open version, due to its greater weight being offset by the aerodynamic superiority of a closed body over an open one. More popular in Britain than in the mainstream American market, the E Type benefitted from a 4.2 litre power plant in 1965. In 1966 it was joined by a 2+2 version
