Our Test Drive: The Jaguar E-Type at 60

well as you can probably tell it's a bit of a cold and frosty day today and that's kind of appropriate because 60 years ago on a very similar cold frosty snowy night a man called norman dewis was given a long drive to undertake now norman was a racing driver he was a world record holder but he was also jaguar's chief development and test driver and the drive he was given to do that night was no ordinary drive it was to take one of only two new cars in the world and drive it from coventry to geneva overnight in conditions quite like this and he made it he made it the next morning in time for the opening of the second day of the geneva motor show and was able to pull the new convertible version of jaguar's e-type up onto the stand next to the coupe version which had caused such a stir such enormous interest the day before that jaguar simply had to send out a second car for everyone to look at and thus was the e-type legend born 60 years ago this year well maybe not quite boring actually that was sort of more of a preview really of what the e-type would be capable of in terms of legend building because it was later on that year that the e-type was famously road tested by the motor magazine who took one in fact who took the original geneva motor show car to the famous chebeck highway in belgium which the belgian authorities would very kindly close down for people and decided to see if jaguar's claim of 150 miles per hour that's 240 odd kilometers per hour top speed was in any way accurate now you've got to remember that in 1961 cars didn't do 120 miles an hour most cars didn't do 100 miles an hour uh most cars would potter along at a maximum speed of about 80 to 90 miles per hour and that would be quite an expensive car the e-type would hit 150 miles an hour for around half the price of any other car that could half the price of any ferrari or aston martin that was similarly powerful and similarly fast so it was quite the revolutionary in that respect mind you that original road test was a bit of a cheat on jaguar's part which the guys from motor magazine later admitted to that when jaguar dropped off the car in belgium for the maximum speed test runs um apparently the engine wouldn't idle below 4000 rpm it had racing dunlop tires on and someone had taken the bumpers off uh it did hit the magic 150 miles per hour though and later versions with the bigger 4.2 liter engine that originally type had a 3.8 with the bigger 4.2 liter engine those e-types would genuinely do 150 miles an hour in standard road-going trim i'm not sure that you'd have wanted to have done 150 miles an hour in an original e-type though because well i haven't quite done it myself but i've had a small taste of what it might be like because a few years back i drove the one and only e-type that i've ever driven it was a series two it was a two plus two coupe so it had the extra kind of hump at the back of the roof which makes it one of the least elegant e-types of all time but still a very very pretty car a bit of a rare one too because it had an automatic gearbox bolted to the back of that 4.2 liter engine and an automatic sounds like anathema to a car like the e-type but actually it wasn't that bad and it's probably a better choice than the awful old four-speed manual moss gearbox that those original e-types came with but anyway i was driving this down in county claire lovely bright sunny day middle of summer not a care in the world been loaned it for a few hours to go and drive it and photograph it typical jammy motoring journalist came on to a straight stretch just in front of me and nissan micro poodling along relatively slowly so i pulled out to overtake gave it some throttle accelerated up and past lovely big 4.2 liter straight six xk engine roaring away and then it just kept roaring and it kept roaring and it kept roaring because the throttle jammed open and suddenly i had an e-type going absolutely flat chat down a country road in county glare um with no way of stopping it um but thankfully i just knocked the gearbox into neutral and coasted down to a stop even with the engine still going full tilt uh and eventually got it all switched off and and and pulled onto a safe side road uh the owner came out and it turned out that the kick down mechanism on the automatic had jammed the throttle cable so uh yeah that was fun um the e-type was always a bit of a bad boy though wasn't it i mean it was owned by people like peter sellers and george bess so it was never a car that was going to be very far from bad behavior and maybe jaguar kind of had an inkling about that maybe that's why they never let the irish times road test one originally the only irish road test of an e-type that took place according to the nice folks at the irish jaguar club uh was actually done by the sunday independent the times we weren't allowed anywhere near it for some strange reason um but the e-type legend built and built and built and it went on through series two and series three cars those series three cars became a bit of a sad ending for the e-type because they got bigger and heavier and wider and more bloated they did get that lovely 5.3 liter v12 engine from jaguar but that just didn't seem to suit the e-type it was a big heavy engine and very very thirsty and yeah okay it was lovely and smooth and powerful but it wasn't a sports car engine it wasn't the engine the e-type should have had and i think in some ways the e-type actually hurt jaguar because ever after ever since the e-type went out of production in 1975 and got replaced by the xjs which was never a sports car was it was always a a big grand tourer a comfy cross-continent express jaguar was constantly trying to reinvent the e-type and getting itself tied in not trying to do it and in doing so i think missed loads and loads of opportunities to become what it should be and what it should still be and what it kind of is now which is the british bmw or the british audi there was a whole pallava of we're going to build a new f-type in the early 2000s and it went on and on and went through concept cars and prototypes and all the rest of it and all that time jaguar should really have been focusing on building rivals to things like the 3 series and the a4 and the a6 and the 5 series and stuff like that and they didn't and it hurt the company as a result but finally in 2012 2013 we did get the the f-type and at last we had a proper proper successor to the e-type and i do think that the current f-type is still a truly brilliant sports guy even if you just buy the one with the four-cylinder turbo engine it is a fantastic thing to drive and a fantastic thing to look at and as an all-rounder so much better than the e-type ever was because the e-type always had terrible brakes it had that rotten four-speed manual gearbox they used to rust like crazy their headlights were bad i mean you know for a car designed in 1961 that looked like it came from the future it still had a lot of contemporary flaws for 1961 but nonetheless here we are 60 years on and we're still talking about it and it's still a landmark car and it's still an icon of the motoring world it's right up there with the 911 the mini the series one land rover the corvette uh and the volkswagen beetle and so on as icons of motoring you just instantly know what an e-type is that priapic shape that conjures up all sorts of worrying freudian thoughts about the owner it is unmistakable and it might just be getting a third lease of life i suppose the e-types first lease of life was obviously its original life back in the 60s and 70s as that rebel renegade 150 mile an hour sports car and then it kind of got a second life from the late 80s onwards as a classic car as a car for restoration as a car for investment because frankly e-types are now staggeringly valuable but now we're moving into potentially a third life because there is an electric e type now jaguar hasn't built very many of these uh it did make one prototype for uh harry and megan to use as their royal wedding car it uses a bolt-in electric motor and battery stack that goes in the front of the car where the engine used to be so you can swap back and forth you can put the old xk petrol engine back in if you want um and it should do around about you know 300 400 kilometers on a full charge so the e-type zero as jaguar calls it could possibly just maybe on its 60th birthday give the e-type a new a third lease of life wouldn't that be interesting wouldn't that be fantastic if that original 150 mile per hour howler the car that tried to kill me could actually make a comeback as an electric car to bring sporting cars to bring beautiful cars and don't forget enzo ferrari described the e-type as the most beautiful car in the world to bring that all of that into the 21st century with zero emissions power on board well that's a 60th birthday present worth having i think isn't it you

Channel: Car Reviews

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Id: AG-swQfNwqU

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021