The story of Jaguar's E-Type has been told many times, especially on the 50th anniversary of the car's introduction, a celebration which is already half a dozen years in our rear-view mirror. The lightweight racing versions of the E-Type have also gotten lots of attention, enough that Jaguar recently re-issued this version of the car for 6 well-heeled customers, completing the originally planned run of 18 cars. The factory also decided to complete the original order for 25 of the road-going XK-SS version of the D-type*, releasing 9 cars for avid collectors after what one writer called the longest tea break in automotive history. Not to be reissued, however, and only dimly remembered, are a pair of cars which filled the gap between the D and E-Types, one of which marked the first appearance of an E-Type Jaguar in road racing. In 1957, during the period when the Brown's Lane factory was releasing a handful of road-equipped D-Types with sketchy bumpers and convertible tops, they were also testing a prototype for a more practical road car based on the structure and general shape of the D...
This was E-1A, an alloy-bodied ("A" stood for aluminum) roadster with monocoque (stressed-skin) body structure with attached tubular subframe cradling the engine, which in this case was the 2.4 liter unit from the first version of the recently-released compact Jaguar sedan (later known as the Mark I, but only after the Mark II showed up). The small engine choice was related to the 2.5 liter limit imposed by the FIA for prototype road racing cars in 1956, the year the project started. More interesting is the fact that E-1A received an independent rear suspension to go with its four-wheel disc brakes, the first Jaguar to abandon the live rear axle. The form of the car predicts the themes of the eventual E-Type production car, with flattened ovals describing the form in plan, elevation and section. It looked much like an elongated D-Type, but as the car was kept under wraps, the general public never saw it, and it was scrapped after completing the test program. By 1960, though, the public finally got a preview of something more like the E-Type production car, in the form of the lone E-2A prototype shared at that year's Le Mans 24 Hours by Dan Gurney and Walt Hansgen, driving for the Briggs Cunningham team. After abandoning his quest to win that race with a car of his own manufacture*, the American had become a Jaguar dealer and had taken over the firm's American racing operation. E-2A, with its monocoque construction and riveted alloy body panels, slotted knock-off disc wheels and high tapered tail, echoed much of the D-Jag's look, and it was completed in February 1960, a year before the production car appeared. It appeared for testing at Le Mans in April 1960 in bare aluminum.
As with E-1A and all D-types, the one-piece bonnet lifted to reveal the tubular subframe cradling a twin-cam six, in this case a fuel-injected 3 liter dry-sump version with aluminum block. Like E-1A, the car represented an advance over the D-Type in using the new independent rear suspension design with inboard disc brakes. As raced, the car also featured a stabilizing fin much like that on the D, and the car was still a good distance from the production E-Type which would appear in March of 1961...both the door sills and the bonnet shut line are higher than the final version. Unlike the D-Type or production E-Type, the car also featured vents at the leading edges of the rear fenders, apparently to cool those inboard rear brakes. After adjusting rear toe-in and camber at Gurney's request, handling proved stable and steady, and E-2A posted the fastest lap time in practice. During the race itself, a ruptured pipe in the Lucas injection system was replaced, but may have caused the piston damage which caused withdrawal after six hours of racing. Retaining its white and blue Cunningham team colors, but adopting the 3.8 liter engine with wide-angle head, the car was raced successfully in the USA, with Walt Hansgen winning at Bridgehampton and finishing third behind a Maserati Birdcage and Ferrari TR59 at Road America. After its SCCA career in the States was over, E-2A was returned to the Jaguar factory, where it was used to test an early version of the Dunlop Maxaret anti-lock braking system which was later used on the Jensen FF, but not on the E-Type production cars.
Malcolm Sayer's design for the production E-Types released in March 1961 shared E-2A's general profile, but lost the rear fender air intakes and gained a parabolic blister in the bonnet's center, necessary as the production engine was taller than the dry-sump racing unit. The door sills and bonnet sill were lower, and the car was offered in a fastback coupe with side-opening hatch or a sleek roadster with wind-up windows and optional removable hardtop. The E-Type which posted the best performance at Le Mans, however, was not one of the dozen lightweights, or even an open car like E-2A. It was a steel-bodied coupe entered and driven by Briggs Cunningham and team mate Roy Salvadori. The car was fast and reliable enough to average just under 109 mph for the 24 hours in 1962, and finished 4th behind three Ferraris, and on the same lap as the new lightweight E-Type driven to 5th place by Sargent and Lumsden. It was the best finish ever posted by an E-Type at Le Mans. Jaguar would win the 24 Hours again, finally, in 1988 and 1990, but that would be with specialized racers.
It might have pleased Briggs Cunningham, a Jaguar dealer, to finish ahead of a bunch of specialized racing cars in a steel-bodied coupe that closely resembled the cars he was offering to his customers...
*Footnote: The story of Cunningham's adventure making and racing his own cars is covered in our post for April 15, 2017: "A Moment Too Soon: The Cars of Briggs Swift Cunningham." The Cunningham E-Type is displayed as raced at the Collier Collection in the Revs Institute, with slight differences from stock including the bubble covers for fog lights, air flow diverters behind wheel wells showing knockoff disc wheels, addition of a roll bar and deletion of bumpers. We featured an intimate look at the D-Type Jaguar in our post for July 28, 2017, entitled "Shipshape, from an Aircraft Point of View."
Photo credits:
Top: Jaguar Cars, reproduced on youtube.com
2nd: jaguarheritage.com
3rd: slotcar-today.com
4th: jdclassics.com
5th & 6th: the author
7th: Ian Avery-DeWitt
8th: jaguar.com
8th: jaguar.com
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