As Lofty England said, "The E-Type was the fruit of the racing years, not a race car itself." But its well-appointed interior, civilized 3.8 XK engine (borrowed directly from the XK-150S) and compliant suspension made it an ideal 2-place touring car. In a way, XK-E (a designation no longer favored by most enthusiasts) was probably the right name the car was a little of each.With its monocoque passenger compartment/tail section, tube-framed engine bay and tilting bonnet, it was clearly descended from the D-Type. it was introduced as the XK-E.įloor wax or dessert topping? What was the deal? Was this Jaguar's new Le Mans contender or the replacement for the aging XK-150? Yet within the factory, and for the European market, the new Jaguar was called the E-Type while in the U.S. Jaguar racing cars of the Fifties had been designated C-Type and D-Type, while the road cars had been XKs, followed by the model number. Here we get into the funny business of the car's name. William Heynes was chief engineer and mechanical interpreter of Lyons' dreams and intentions Frank "Lofty" England towered over the project (literally) as Jaguar's service manager and race director Norman Dewis, chief test driver, shook down the prototypes and Bob Knight developed the E-Type's independent rear suspension, a system so good it's still the rear suspension of choice to hundreds of hot rodders.Ĭredits could go on forever the point is, this was a very good team, nearly all of whom had five outright Le Mans victories under their belts and had just shifted their sights away from the sublime D-Type racing car to aim at the next big thing: a Jaguar racing car for the road. With a few subtle changes of proportion and line, they go from pretty good to downright brilliant. One look at most Jaguar prototypes-penned before Lyons had a chance to put in his gifted hand-and you're ready to get down on your knees and thank heaven he intervened. He was not an engineer, but had that rarest of human traits, almost perfect good taste.
From his early years as builder of the lovely Swallow sidecars, through all of the SS, XK and racing-type Jaguars, the unschooled but intuitive Lyons had shown a remarkable sense of both value and style in every thing he touched. A lively, energetic man who joined Jaguar in 1950, Sayer had the gift of thinking, instinctively and mathematically, in three dimensions.Įqually gifted was Sayer's famous boss, the founder and president of Jaguar, William Lyons (later to be Sir William ). Most external shaping was the work of the brilliant young Malcolm Sayer, an automotive engineer who'd spent World War II doing aerodynamic work for the Bristol Aeroplane Company. There's another defense of this amnesia too: While the E-Type was both derivative of the D-Type and strikingly new, it somehow looked like a car we'd always known about but had never met, a natural shape waiting since Greek times for a modern Praxiteles to chisel away all the stone that didn't look like an E-Type.Ĭars being more complex than statues (they've got stuff inside 'em), there was no single sculptor behind the new Jaguar, just the usual industrial team.
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