One of the crucial attributes for a car designer to possess is the ability to separate what they personally like, from what customers like. It’s important for me when either designing a car, talking about the design of cars, or reviewing cars, to put aside my own preferences and tastes and understand what’s important to people actually buying the thing in question. My fallback analogy is this: I hate the sodding Beatles. Their stupid haircuts. Their stupid suits. Their stupid jangled caterwauling. All of it makes me want to scoop out my eyeballs with a melon baller and shove an ice pick through my ears. I just don’t like them but the point is I do recognize their importance and why other people like them, even if it’ll be a cold day in hell before any of their music darkens my playlists. Another bit of swinging sixties Britishness that is universally adored but I’m caustically ambivalent about is the Jaguar E-Type. Put the kettle on (coffee, white, no sugar and don’t bring me any of that freeze-dried instant crap), it’s time for Damn Good Design.
Enzo Ferrari supposedly called it “the most beautiful car ever made” (it’s unclear whether he actually said such a thing). It’s one of six cars on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (David, Torch and Mercedes will no doubt be thrilled to learn three of the others are a Willys Jeep, a Beetle and a Smart). No click bait list of best looking cars is complete without an E-Type somewhere near the summit. Good grief it’s all so predictable. Saying you like E Types like saying you like The Beatles. Can’t you make even a modicum of effort into being just a little bit original?
Jaguar as we know and understand it really got going properly as a car company after the Second World War, that particular dust-up forcing a change of name from the Swallow Sidecar Company. Their first post-war sports car was the sensational XK120 of 1948 – named after its top speed of 120mph. It was a raffish unadorned streamliner that riffed on the profile of the pre-war BMW 328. Solid steel wheels and enclosed rear wheel arches gave the original roadster a touch of the art-deco. It represented a yearning for speed and glamour from a bombed-out country still reeling from war. Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart were among the first customers for what was then the fastest production car in the world. As the forties became the fifties the XK120 begat the XK140 and finally XK150, moving further away from the original’s simplicity to a more traditional wood trim and wire wheels look.
I Want That Car And I Want It Now
In 1951 and 1953 Jaguar had been victorious at Le Mans with the C-Type, a racing version of the XK120. They followed that up with a purpose-built racer, the D-Type, which won the race in 1955, 1956 and 1957. Both these cars had their shape honed by the aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer, who had previously worked at the Bristol Aeroplane Company during the war. The quintessential British boffin, his aerodynamic curves created from mathematical formulae helped the big cats on the mighty Mulsanne straight, but away from the unique challenges of Le Sarthe, Jaguar’s fortunes in the World Sportscar Championship were mixed. This led to several unsold customer D-Type racers being converted into a road-going version, the XKSS, but Sir William Lyons had long wanted a new high-speed sports car to replace the XK150.
What emerged in 1961 at the Parc des Vives hotel in Geneva was no less a sensation than the XK120 had been thirteen years earlier. A heady mix of wartime and racing engineering experience clothed in Sayer’s aero forms further developed from the D-Type, the E-Type was all thrusting symbolism and mechanical theatre, dripping with tumescent sex appeal. The voluptuous curves of the D-Type had been stretched, smoothed and rounded into something a lot less feral and a lot more suggestive.
It sent the press and public alike into fits of rapture – priced at a bargain £2097 for the roadster and £2196 for the fixed head, nothing could touch its combination of speed, style and price. It had a 3.8-liter XK straight six engine lifted from the D-Type making 265bhp, a four speed box and crucially, independent rear suspension and disc brakes. Jaguar claimed a top speed of 150 mph when the typical asthmatic family sedan of the time would struggle to gasp its way much past seventy. Jaguar’s top speed claims might have been exaggerated but it didn’t matter. You were not going faster at any price.
Aston Martins and Ferraris at double or triple the E-Type’s money were not even close. When it appeared in New York a month after Geneva, Frank Sinatra apparently said “I want that car, and I want it now.” Bogie’s opinion on the new Jaguar remains sadly unrecorded, as by then he was worm food. Still, it’s impossible to overstate the effect the E-Type had on its release. Sir William Lyons certainly wasn’t ready for its impact; because of their slightly antiquated production methods, Jaguar couldn’t build the cars fast enough.
Iconic upon launch, the E-Type has remained an object of lust and desire in the sixty years since. Good going for a car built in an unglamorous ex-wartime factory by men in brown coats with horn-rimmed glasses. Even if it hadn’t been the fastest thing on the road in its day people would still have revered it for the way it looks. And this is where my problems with the E-Type begin.
Breaking The Rules
When you enroll at car design school you are not handed a big book of Car Design Rules that Are Not To Be Broken. The closest thing to a default text is probably H-Point, which doesn’t get into the aesthetic side of things at all but covers pretty much everything else. However, there are rules, or rather guidelines that will help nudge you in the direction of a pleasing aesthetic outcome as you scratch your way through hours upon hours of sketching sessions. It takes time, trial and error, and an innate artistic sensibility to gain an understanding of what works and doesn’t, and why. Although Malcolm Sayer was in the strictest sense an engineer, he did have an artistic side. And the E-Type does break a couple of what we would now consider cardinal car design rules, but by gets away with it through sheer chutzpah.
A healthy dash-to-axle ratio is something that idiots think defines how good a car looks. It concerns how far away the centerline of the front wheels is from the base of the windshield when looking at a car from the side. Taking this dimension in isolation, the E-Type has way too much of it; a consequence of packaging a locomotive of an inline six in what is a very small car – only 145” (4.6m) long, 65” (1.6m) wide and 48” (1.2m) high. But taken as an overall proportion, the bonnet length is balanced out by the passenger cabin taking up almost the entirety of the back half of the car, and the fact it sits very lightly on its inset wheels.
Another issue in side profile that goes against the rules is the pillars. Ideally, side pillars should all align to an imaginary convergence point (or points) somewhere above the roof of the car. On the E-Type the A and B pillars are parallel. By itself this is not a massive problem – the B pillar had to be at that angle because otherwise the side glass wouldn’t be able to drop into the door. But A-pillar being so upright creates an unholy mess at the base where it joins the sheet metal, because the door shut line then has to travel forward to create a big enough door opening to swing your legs in. Thus with the door open there’s a bloody great corner in the door opening, perfect for cracking your kneecaps on. This was probably driven by Sayer wanting as much curvature in the windscreen as possible for aerodynamic reasons, but it’s a compromise too far. Better to move the base of the A pillar forwards and flatten out the windscreen a bit, giving you a bigger door opening and then you could make do with two normal size wipers, rather than three tiddly ones.
You get the feeling looking at an E-Type that the metal skin is struggling to contain everything inside it. The way the bonnet bulges. The mechanicals hanging out underneath the car, in particular the no-effort-made exhaust pipes. The passenger compartment barely wrapping around two occupants and their luggage. This is not someone wearing something tight but considered in order to look alluring – it’s the twat wearing Aviators who skips leg day in a top two sizes too small. It’s almost bursting out all over the place. And don’t get me started on the humpbacked 2+2 or the later bloated series III V12 models, which were just embarrassing. For a car verging on caricature, they push it too far into bad comedy.
Sayer designed aircraft before he designed cars; little wonder the E Type looks like a tear in the wrong place and it’ll explode like a Comet airliner. That may sound a bit melodramatic but remember that bargainacious purchase price? These things were thrown together from cheap materials, and Jaguar didn’t exactly have a reputation for reliability. In one darkly humorous episode of Mad Men, one of the major characters attempts to gas himself to death, using the exhaust from his E-Type. But he fails because the car won’t start. But was their ever more perfect car casting than Jaguar in a sixties set show about ostensibly high-flying, good-looking men drinking and womanizing their way through the working week?
It’s The First Footballers Car
And this is the second part of my problem with the E-Type. It was released right at the start of the swinging sixties. Away from Hollywood stars, it was the epitome of ‘a lot of flash for not much cash’ – the very first footballers car. George Best, probably the first celebrity footballer and a man known for his heroic exploits on the pitch, in the bar, and in the bedroom, had three E-Types.
American automotive journalist Henry Manney III, with a timely flourish of ear-appropriate sexism, called it “the greatest crumpet catcher known to man.” Are you in a spandex-clad metal band? Don’t shove armadillos in your trousers – stick a 1:18 die-cast E-Type model down there instead. Forget figuratively, it is literally a dick on wheels. Part of me can’t help feeling that part of the E-Type’s enduring appeal to the male enthusiast is that deep down in the lizard part of their brain, they think it will make them irresistible. If the Mini was the classless part of Carnaby Street and the Swinging Sixties, the E-Type was déclassé.
A lot of my antipathy towards British sports cars of the sixties is based on the fact I felt they represented a nation in post war decline – fashionable on the surface while doing little to advance the state of the art underneath. The E-type was of the moment when it was released in 1961, but being based on a racer that last won Le Mans in 1957 it was trading on former glory. You might think I’m being harsh, but in 1963, just two years after the E-Type launched, the C2 Corvette, Porsche 911 and Mercedes Pagoda all appeared, advancing the state of the sports car art in very different ways while simultaneously making the E-Type look very old hat indeed.
Finally wheezing off the stage like Jumpsuit Elvis in 1974, despite several aborted attempts Jaguar never really replaced the E-Type properly until the F-Type appeared in 2013. That car dies this year as Jaguar rebrands itself as a maker of high-end EVs.
The Corvette, 911 and SL continued to evolve and stay relevant, and are all still in production.
All images courtesy of Jaguar Media
I’m guessing you’re pro-XJ-S, not pro-Wings?
Hideous things, although the very late ones are a lot better.
Here in the states, we even got the 6cyl/manual version of them for a very short while. Even teenage me knew that was something unusual.
I was always a fan of Ian Callum jags. . .I think his work at Ford was pretty good too.
The E-type is definitely a 5 top car for. . .and rules are mentioned to be broken. I have always liked the XK120-150 more though. . .something about the front fenders and the way the car “swoops” back
And in case your curious, my top 5 are today (it changes. . .), in no particular order:
Jaguar XK120-150
Corvette C2
Jaguar E-type
Chevy GMT400 trucks
Austin Healey 3000
Every boomer choices
I am late Gen X. . .I just been on a classic kick lately. I feel they just had more character, as the didn’t have to abide by the regulations, safety standards, etc. They just had more freedom on design in my opinion.
I was very tempted to put the current generation Mazda on the list in place of the Austin. The ND is great IMO.
I liked your list, not exactly mine,but solid choices. I loved the ND Miata in pics, but in the flesh it looks a little tall and stubby. I thought Fiat did it better.
The ND has a weird crease in the body side that goes nowhere and doesn’t always show up in images.
Is it tar and feathers or pitchforks and torches time ?
I think you just articulated why I as a late Gen X always preferred the more honest early cars to the later models. They are still absolutely gorgeous, but fail in the details. I need the simple metal toggle switches and wire wheels.
Dad told me he drove Corvettes and these in the ’60s, said these were better than the ‘Vette but both were eclipsed by the 911.
OoooooOOOo man, our boy Adrian is coming out swinging with fightin’ words.
Look, I get your criticisms, they’re mostly valid (the top view with the windscreen arc looks good because it relates to the front of the car; flattening it out would fix those ‘knee cappers’ but then the greenhouse would be so box) but the rest of the surfaces are so…. … I don’t want to put a word on them. It’s great surfacing. The curves on most of the front half are just DANGED attractive, which is the most important part anyway. If you flattened that greenhouse i
Yes, the overall proportions are a bit off, there is too much hood. Yes, the back half looks a little tall; it is not a timeless classic like a longhood 911.
However….
It is still the example of the greatest hit Britain has ever had, other than maybe the mini. The amount of car you got for the dollar put all the other marques to shame, and as you stated, they literally could not build them fast enough. The engine was old, the quality of the parts themselves were sort of questionable, but you got so many really advanced bits on this thing; the IRS with inboard brakes, the dual overhead valves on that bigass XK engine. And let’s talk about that.
The XK engine is badass; it won lemans 5 years in a row (one could argue it was due to jag’s disc brakes but whatever). It was dreamed up after wrenching on WW2 airplanes, and basically a miniature consumer version of a Merlin. I love engines. The XK is a great engine, not necessarily due to any insane performance or technology, but it’s just an attractive, bigass inline 6, that makes me think of WW2 airplanes and that epic D type.
I actually bought an entire car, just to experience this engine.
https://youtu.be/1f0VYzMINP4
With the success of the E type bringing jaguar the most financial success they’d ever seen, their sedans were now antiquated, so the heat was on create a saloon. They didn’t really know how to make hits, so they basically started with the exact same ingredients as the E type; same engine, same transmissions, same rear end with inboard disc brakes, same suspension, and created the XJ6.
Over here, however, they were all sort of neutered, and came with a detuned twin SU intake/fuel system, which reduced the power, and then they ONLY offered them with automatics.
The one I snagged is what the XJ6 was really meant to be; it has a transmission and triple SU carb/intake swapped off an E type, it’s a series 1 so it has the best bumpers, and it’s a short wheelbase (before they f’d up the proportions on the rear doors).
I haven’t driven it yet, but I’m getting close. I’m so excited. Part of what makes the E type awesome is that XK engine, imho. I’m digressing and talking about the mechanical bits too much, but you’re dead on about the E type hiding 1950s technology under that sexy skin. True.
But it was still cool 1950s tech!!!! And honestly, the fact that most of this tech existed in the 50s that took decades to reach most cars (4 wheel disc, dual overhead cams/4 valves/cyl) is impressive, and things like ‘inboard mounted discs’ are still found on race cars, not passenger cars.
It’s not a perfect design, but it’s the best Jag has ever done, and I want them to continue to exist. I’m not sure that is going to happen, and that bums me out.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Cheers!
Not sure about 4 valves per cylinder, do you mean the E type’s XK engine had those?
Ah, my bad, I have a few engines apart right now. ADD. lol. But still, the point is that the car has a LOT of advanced tech, especially given the time period in which most of it was designed.
Fascinating read as always-100% agreed the later variations are so bloated, I didn’t realize they even made them all the way thru ’74. Reminds me a little of the C3 Corvette. An over-styled macho car in many ways but a stripped down early version (no vinyl roof, no side-pipes, minimal chrome) is arguably still a good looking car. By the time they killed it after a production run long enough to have hit puberty and a mid-cycle refresh that emphasized its worst elements it was a greasy looking symbol of everything wrong with ’70s American cars. Still I can’t help but get excited when I see an early e-type on the road for all that they may have gotten wrong they got a lot right and still have a presence in 2024 that’s hard to deny.
I’ve always been more partial to the early roadsters, I think they’re not quite so swollen and priapic and come closer to mimicking the taut, bare-minimum bodywork of the D type-I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the roadster vs the hardtop.
I don’t like The Beatles either, and the only E-Type I like is the roadster. The coupe just looks weird to me. Chop off the roof and all is forgiven, though.
This is it – coupe, not so great, Convertible- the best, What says Adrian (who, BTW, is way too young to get the Beatles).?
I haven’t read the article yet, but I don’t even know if I can. 😉
Reading now. While I don’t like the Beatles, for whatever reason in my head I find the comparison of music to physical beauty a little different. I find there to be less subjectivity in physical art than in music. IDK why though. Just my thoughts.
Challenge yourself. It’s the way to enlightenment.
Original? Maybe not, but the stark difference between that snarling dagger of a car in our neighbor’s driveway and the rusty 52 Ford pickup in ours was a revelation: previously, I had thought my grandfather’s Model T’s were beautiful with their shining brass & nickel. This was sleek, dangerous, even sexy—something 8yo me certainly didn’t quite grasp yet. But, it was subversive, and that was everything in the early 70s to a kid.
HERESY JUST PLAIN HERESY! I can only assume you never uttered this insanity aloud to your car design brethren as not only would you have been thrown out of design school but stripped buck naked doused in hot tar and covered in feathers. I get your art esoteric design certainties bur you forget every new level of art was successful because the rules of the old Era were tossed out and 8gnored. In addition, unlike most so called art cars have a certain preliminary need to perform as an automobile. Therefore, the art laws do not apply in a vacuum. The E-Type Jaguar is the original sport coupe/convertible.
Without which no Corvette no Miata, no Z3-4, or Mercedes clown shoe. Heck i wouldnt be surprised if Shelby got the idea for his Cobra and future light weight more power cars from the E-Type Jaguars. An entire genre of cars owes its existance to E-Type Jaguars.
I sentence you to designing 10 different malais type coupes with 4 doors with no changes. Just draw 10 the exact same way.
Uh, just picking out one of those statements to shred: the AC Ace (which became the Cobra, thanks to a bigger engine) was introduced in 1953; seven years before the E-type. The sports car was not a new invention; Jaguar themselves came up with a little thing called the XK120 in 1948, for instance.
The E-type’s appearance was also clearly inspired by other cars. Look at the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, first shown in 1957.
Well now it’s particular. First many sports cars ie MG mgb Triumph fear are not sports cars but under powered convertibles. Then we do have decent powered decent handling cars that market the sporty but not sports car name. Now a big fan of the AC Ace but it’s first 7 years it used a WWI Era motor with less than 100 hp. The fact that the E Type Jaguar 265 hp and the fastest car of its time by a significant margin is the difference between sporty and sports car. It frankly was in a new class never seen before.
also would like to note the C1 Corvette came out in 53 and c2 only 2 years behind the e type, meaning the design had probably been in the works before the e type came out (https://news.classicindustries.com/c2-corvette-history-prices-options i wont say that this is 100% true as the sources aren’t included but this says mid to late 50s)
My good sir, once the pitchforks and torches have arrived from Amazon, I shall arrive at your doorstep with a few dozen townsfolk to express our displeasure of your heretic and blasphemous expoundings. Good day sir, I say GOOD DAY!
I got my own pitchfork and torch let’s go.
The hounds are awaiting your arrival.
Funny but my Jaguars are destined to defeat them. Bwahaha.
BTW I hear Brits are big Gin drinkers. Is that correct? Can you still get bitter lemon mixer there it is gone from the USA.
Gin is massively popular in the UK at the moment, and has been for a few years. It’s gone total hipster in the amount of varieties available. I drink a lot of tonic water because I suffer from bad cramp in my legs and feet, and some weeks there’s no tonic water left on the shelves, because the gin drinkers have grabbed it all.
Yea bitter lemon is still widely available as a mixer as well, although we wouldn’t have that with gin.
I have heard the quinine in tonic is good for cramps, also bananas. But on my parents day Gin and bitter lemon was a thing, it tastes yummy even by itself.
It’s a truly miserable place that chooses gin of their own free will.
It wasn’t called Mother’s Ruin for nothing.
You’ll release the dogs, or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark, they shoot bees at you? Well, go ahead!
This all reminds me of the Frank Stephenson video where he attempts to improve the E-type and succeeds in creating a comical suppository of a car that would fit perfectly into an alternate reality stuck in 2003.
Sometimes it’s the weird parts that make something more than beautiful.
I wholeheartedly agree. I think that’s what’s missing from modern cars which is what makes them significantly less beautiful than the older cars: a beauty mark. Modern cars are so focus-grouped and market-tested that they lose any sense of character. It’s why I think the startup EVs have brought interest back to car design and styling: they don’t have time for any of that nonsense.
You may not like it, but I have since I was 17. Chuck, of who I have written about before, took me in one for lunch one day when I was working in his shop.
Even back then I was a large boy. 6’1″ and 225lbs or so? The kneecapper got me. Getting into and out of the seats by sitting on the frame rails. Everything about wedging myself into that tiny ass cockpit sucked. Today people laugh when they see me with my Miata and ask “how do you fit in that little car!?” and I just want to tell them that doing that is nothing.
Then Chuck drove off and started the drive with part of an Italian Tune-Up. His shop was on a sleepy little road in a semi-industrial area of town, there was a stop sign maybe 1/4-1/2 mile from his shop. I was too frightened by what happened next to have a completely coherent account of matters, but I swear to the sweet Lady of Eternal Speed, he got that car up to 200MPH and back down without using the brakes in time for the stop sign. From there it got so much better, and simultaneously worse.
I have dreams about that ride from time to time.
What’s the next hot take? Golden Retrievers are dangerous? Gandhi was a child molester? Sophia Loren’s breasts are too large?
The E-type shipped with disc brakes, DOHC straight six making 250hp, rack and pinion steering, and monocoque construction. For $2000. In 1961!
Even without breathtaking looks, it would have been a revelation.
Sophia Loren is on my Future Wives list. Or she would be, were she not Italian. I’m doing with that brand of craziness.
You own a Ferrari. You clearly have no boundaries.
Trust me the Ferrari is less painful.
It was about $5-6 grand through most of the sixties. Still a great deal, a Mustang or TR4 was about three grand, a pretty basic economy car two grand.
I’m going to try and be the better person here, so I admit it, you might just be wrong about everything. Whew. I feel so much better.
Yes! The. Beatles. Are. Not. Good.
Look, I was never a Beatles fan either, subjectively, but I recognize objectively they were brilliant songwriters and lyricists. The same applies to cars as well, and all sorts of other things. One can like something that is objectively and measurably not good also.
The Beatles are great, and I don’t think Adrian was saying otherwise. He’s saying if someone asks you “who’s your favorite band”, then the Beatles is a boring answer.
They were ahead of their time, pioneers in many ways. Stuff I love, stuff I hate but I respect it all.
Hey now, that’s a bad take.
If I wanted to wear a dick on my sleeve, then I’d drive an E-Type or a Toyota 2000GT. Thankfully for myself and everyone around me, I do not wish to promulgate a phallic proboscis upon my person in public.
THANK YOU.
and there’s a typo in the windshield curvature pic.
but mostly, THANK YOU. I have never understood why people think this is such a good looking car. It’s beyond caricature.
That said, I’d kill for an AMG GT, which is modern penis-on-wheels.
Just buy and drive a K Car.
Read the dash-to-axle article I linked.
Agreed on the SLR, but I think that one doesn’t work because of the aggressive rake from the top of the headlights to the cowl, it looks like they stretched the front of a W203 C-Class. And the rest of the design is… kinda challenged. I still have a special place in my little heart for them, for personal reasons.
The SLS and especially GT work better as the whole front end is much more horizontal. It’s still literally just a penis attached to some seats and a bigass V8, but I think they work so damn well in person. Also, let’s not forget that was a compromise to make them front-mid engined. I know you mentioned that, but even with the insane proportions, the GT has extremely tight packaging (and was based on the SLS, just shrunken) and I really don’t think it could be any smaller. They’re kinda known for being extremely hot inside from how tightly everything is packed and how little room there is for cooling.. I’m burying the lede, but I guess we’ll disagree here. The GT (and SLS, by extension) are just fucking awesome. and *whispers* wayyy better than the F-Type.
The E-type is the car that for me, kick started puberty.
I later surmised that when William Lyons showed the sketch of the car to his secretary, she slapped him.
All that being said, if there are any “imperfections”, they only serve to make the car more “human”. Perfection isn’t human. When Clapton played a Les Paul through a Marshall in 1965, it distorted. It wasn’t perfect. But that imperfection is what made it beautiful.
Don’t like the Beatles? WTF man?
You are one weird bastard my friend.
But this model Jag was not their best, that we can agree on. Carry on.
One of my exes (the San Jose one) was baffled to the point of anger by this.
E-type never did it for me; not helped by Clarkson or the fact that every third issue of every British motoring magazine had a sketch or a spy shot of the “new E-type” on their covers for around thirty years straight.
I am with Lotsofchops, the Toyota 2000GT did it better.
So as a car fan you are okay with every modern car/suv looking exactly alike? He’ll I bet Torch King of Tail lights can’t tell cars apart by its taillights. Modern designers are following this recipe for disaster that there is a ruke/law for car design and trying to come up with one design for everyone.
Eh, no. But I think there are literally hundreds of cars from the 1960s which look better than the E-type – I will admit that it suffers from overexposure, though; if it was some weird Central European confection cobbled together in a shed in twenty examples, I may have felt differently.
That’s okay dude. Those of us that are not wrong get there are those of you that are wrong and don’t hold your mistakes against you. We can’t all be perfect
Our Designer Isn’t Done Letting You Know That You’re Wrong About Big Wheels On Designers’ Car Drawings
The one part of the E-Type that I’m not fond of is that there’s a bit too much hood. I’m not sure if that qualifies me as an idiot, since I don’t think it categorically defines a good looking car.
Big hood = more room for a bigger motor, and the only changes introduced in car design the last 2 decades is bigger tires. And bigger tiŕes equals poorer performance. The art of car designs dead. Now big old bus in b/w shades with too much power for its design.
The E-type is the “It” car. It’s “That Girl.” The 911 is a Volkswagen with a big engine. The Corvette is an Impala on a diet. The SL is the car of Beverly Hills housewives.
The E-type is sex!
Both the 911 and Corvette are the same d3sign without the guts to go all out.
The D-Type is a much prettier car, IMO. And delightfully aerodynamically slippery. The E-Type has too much crap added to it and its aerodynamically slippery proportions were ruined in the pursuit of the styling fads of the time.
This. D Type is the best Jag, bar none. XKSS a close second, followed by the C and XK120. E was on the downhill side of that particular design bell curve.
I’ve also never liked the E-type but mostly for the hood length (guess I’m an idiot for that). Besides, we all know the 2000GT is the “E-type done right”.
The E Type built properly more like.
I’ll be that guy: the great Toyota 2000GT’s appearance is *to me* disappointing in person vs. in photos, which all seem to be taken with wide angle lenses from 6 inches above the pavement.
It’s got odd cut lines everywhere (like the awkward battery door and the swoopy lower passenger doors), the front and rear clips are too busy and its lights look like afterthoughts (Altezza lights before the Altezza was invented!), the wheels are ho-hum, the rear side windows are truncated, and the entire car is so tiny and narrow that it really doesn’t look graceful in person, especially from the eyepoint of an adult human standing up.
The 2000GT *is* a great car, but it’s just not beautiful in comparison to its contemporaries from, say, Pininfarina, Frua, and Giugiaro.
I’ll be that “That Guy.” The 2000 GT isn’t a great car. It’s just a statement from the Japanese that “hey, we’re here.” I saw one at a US auto show when it was introduced (to Japan only) and never saw or heard of another until modern times.
The 2000 GT was a Jaguar E-type copy with an ugly grille and engine that just barely made a little more than half the power of a Jaguar.
Jaguar sold nearly 73,000 e-Types. Toyota, 351 2000 GTs.
To Mr. Clarke’s comment that the e-Type was old hat in 1963, then why was Toyota copying it in 1967? You could say that the Jaguar/2000 GT lives on in the Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ twins. The first time I saw one at an auto show, I said 2000 GT! Of course, inspired by the e-Type. So the e-Type is not really old hat.
It is sad that Jaguar is but a shell of itself in 2024. And not because they have gone electric. That part is fine. The sad part is that Jaguar never had another hit after the e-Type. It’s been riding the coat tails of the E for more than 60 years. I’ve owned an E, and XJ6 and XK8 models from the 90s. But I wouldn’t buy a new one. Unfortunately Jaguar has had its (nearly)15 years of fame.
PS – How could I forget: The Datsun 240Z was and is a much greater homage to the e-Type than the 2000 GT. Nissan still makes the 380Z, so strands of e-Type DNA live on in two lines of automobiles, contrary to Mr. Clarke’s assertion.