Jaguar's stunning E-type defined 'car' for an American generation

You could start with the stunning good looks that make the Jaguar E-Type a permanent fixture at New York's Museum of Modern Art or with the style and character that defined an era. You could start with the technological innovation, the impressive performance or the value that the E-type's contemporaries simply could not match.

In cold retrospect, there isn't much in the E-type--or the XKE, as it was widely known on this side of the Atlantic--to tarnish its image. So 50 years after its debut at the Geneva and New York auto shows, we'll start with the E-type's most important contribution: It created innumerable car folk and instilled a new generation with passion for the art, science and exhilaration of the automobile.

“The E-type launched at the perfect time,” says Tony O'Keeffe, curator of the Jaguar Heritage Trust in Coventry, England. “A recession was ending, the Swinging ‘60s were ramping up, and the Beatles were about to break. It was something people aspired to, but it was attainable. Like the Model T Ford, the E-type just hit the mark, most of all in America, where it created a new corps of enthusiasts for the marque and the sports-GT car.”

U.S. military veterans were exposed to British automotive values immediately after World War II. They were the nucleus. Yet the E-type introduced the sports car to those who would be called boomers--the children of the prosperous 1950s, including an Indiana boy named Gary Bartlett.

Bartlett first laid eyes on an E-type--a red 1965 coupe--as it sat in a no-parking zone outside the Delaware Theatre in Muncie. Before he and his future wife walked in to see MASH, he took the Jaguar's license number.

“I tracked it through the state police to a surgeon in Anderson, and within a month, I convinced him to sell it for $3,000,” Bartlett says. “I couldn't really afford it--had to talk my dad into cosigning. I drove it down to Tampa for spring break.”

When Bartlett returned, his E-type wasn't purring quite as it had when he left, so he took it to Yingling Gulf in Muncie. “We'll have to take ‘er out and power-tune ‘er,” the local mechanic told him. That didn't sound like a great idea to Bartlett, even if he wasn't quite sure what it meant, so he drove his coupe to the dealership in Indianapolis and bought a shop manual. Before long, E-type owners from all over Indiana were finding their way to Bartlett's dad's tire store for tune and repair. When Dad said, “Sell tires and batteries, or get the hell out,” Bartlett got out and opened his own shop in Muncie. By the time he sold it in 1987, the shop had become one of the most successful import garages in the Midwest, servicing Bentley, Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz. By then, Bartlett had started a company making restoration parts for Jaguars.

Gary Bartlett arrives in Geneva on this year's "E 50" tour.

Jaguar boss Sir William Lyons got a hint of the E-type's potential in the United States with the XKSS. When Lyons had his crew in Coventry turn the remaining D-type race cars into road cars in 1957, all 16 ended up in the States. When Lyons pulled the wraps off the E-type in Geneva in March 1961, other copies were already on a boat for New York.

The E-type debuted as a two-seat coupe (FHC, “fixed-head coupe”) and a roadster (OTS, “open two-seater”). Engineering advancements included a stressed-steel monocoque developed from the D-type, an electric cooling fan and power-assisted four-wheel disc brakes, inboard in back. The independent rear suspension used jointed axles as upper links and tubular lower links, with twin coil springs and shocks on each side. The Moss four-speed gearbox was synchronized after first gear, and a limited-slip differential came standard. With dual-overhead cams, three SU carbs and an aluminum head, Jaguar's 3.8-liter straight-six generated 265 hp. The first tests in British motoring magazines reported 7.1-second 0-to-60-mph times, with top speed at 149.1 mph. Jaguar set prices for the coupe or a fully optioned roadster, including hardtop, at $5,895.

There was nothing quite like the E-type. The Chevrolet Corvette wouldn't get independent rear suspension for two years or all-disc brakes for five. The Porsche 911 was three years away; the 356B had a swing-axle rear end, rear drums and a pushrod four generating about 90 hp. Mercedes-Benz's 300SL made less power than the E-type, with all-drum brakes--at twice the price. Even the Ferrari 250 GTO, often labeled the first supercar after its launch in 1962, had a solid rear axle. Its V12 made just 35 hp more than the E-type's six, and it cost three times as much.

And boy, the E-type looked the part. Inspired by the D-type, it was, in execution, much more. Malcolm Sayer, the man credited with the E-type's design, had admired the Alfa Romeo Disco Volante concept of the mid-1950s, and that's visible in the Jaguar.

Nearly identical in length to a 911, on a longer wheelbase, the E-type has presence beyond its dimensions. Undertired by today's standards, it nonetheless has the cheek to get past it, and it still looks contemporary. It's enough to say that at its unveiling in Geneva, no less a car guy than Enzo Ferrari called the E-type “the most beautiful car ever made.” Clearly, the people who created the E-type had some innate grasp on the dynamics of visual pleasure.

That's ironic, perhaps, because Sayer considered himself a technician and an aerodynamicist foremost. He was trained as an engineer and worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Co. before joining Jaguar in 1951. Decades before CAD software or even wide application of the computer, Sayer introduced the slide rule and seven-figure log tables to Jaguar's design process. Every curve on the E-type was mathematically plotted.

O'Keeffe notes that every Jaguar from World War II to the early 1970s was created by a core group of about a dozen people, including Lyons, Sayer and development driver Norman Dewis, the sole surviving member of the team. The group tested Sayer's calculations in a rudimentary wind tunnel, causing power brown-outs in the Midlands village where it was located.

Jaguar production line in 1961.

By 1963, more than a third of E-type production went to the United States. In 1964, engine displacement increased to 4.2 liters for more torque. The E-type's brakes and cooling system were improved, and it was fitted with an all-synchro transmission. For 1966, Jaguar added a 2+2 coupe to the line, with an optional automatic. The 2+2's length and wheelbase were extended nine inches. With its taller roof and more awkward proportions, the 2+2 is often considered the ugly duckling of E-types, but it has its proponents.

“I suppose it made a better GT,” says O'Keeffe. “There was more space for two and more stowage. I myself have a soft spot for it.”

For 1969, Jaguar introduced the E-type Series 2, driven largely by smog and safety legislation. Twin Zenith-Stromberg carbs replaced the triple SUs on U.S. models, and power declined. The glass covers disappeared from the headlights, and marker lights got larger. The radiator mouth was enlarged, and larger, higher bumpers were introduced. Inside, rocker switches replaced the aircraft-style toggles.

In 1971, now controlled by the British-Leyland conglomerate, Jaguar introduced the Series 3. Its centerpiece was a 5.3-liter V12; emissions controls left the new engine a relatively anemic 250 hp. Also significant: The two-seat coupe disappeared, and roadsters were built on the long wheelbase. For the first time, a grille filled the E-type's radiator opening, and its wheel arches were flared to accommodate larger tires. Power steering was standard. The E-type had morphed into a more luxurious GT.

In 1975, the year Bob Tullius won the SCCA B-Production championship in a Group 44 Series 3, Jaguar killed the E-type and introduced the XJS. By then, Leyland had tripled prices. That core postwar product team had broken up.

Some 72,000 copies later, the E-type had indelibly marked the Swinging ‘60s. It was celebrated as high art and sung about in surf music. It was featured (and wrecked) in dozens of films, from Viva Las Vegas in 1964 to the remake of The Avengers in 1998. It was the conveyance of beauties such as Brigitte Bardot, bad boys such as Steve McQueen and Keith Richards and a couple of Beatles, too (George and Ringo). The E-type has lifted, and to some extent hindered, everything Jaguar has done since.

“Like all iconic cars, the E-type had its downside,” O'Keeffe says. “It's difficult to break a mold when you make the mold that well.”

How many lives and careers have been shaped by the Jaguar E-type as thoroughly as Gary Bartlett's? A statistically irrelevant number, we'd assume--except to Bartlett and the others like him. The Indiana boy doesn't know what became of his first E-type, but he's owned more since, not to mention C-types, D-types, an XKSS, a Group 44 Trans-Am XJS and the first XK220 legally imported into the United States.

There's no science to measure precisely the E-type's impact on car culture in America or on the culture at large. We'd quite arbitrarily estimate that each of the 72,000 E-types was responsible for creating 10 or 20 Jaguar people and 40 or 50 car people whose tastes, demands and outlooks were shaped by this piece of modern art. If you're still reading, you're probably one of them.

By J. P. Vettraino