Since it was unveiled at the Geneva auto show in March 1961, the Jaguar E-Type has regularly topped lists compiled by designers and enthusiasts of the most beautiful cars ever made.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York ratified the E-Type’s significance in 1996, adding a blue roadster to its permanent design collection. It was only the second road car so honored, following a 1946 Cisitalia 202 GT.
In the 50 years since its introduction, a mythology has grown up around this Jaguar: for starters, the alluring sports car almost missed its own press debut, according to the company’s history.
Last-minute delays in preparing the E-Type coupe for the auto show made it necessary to drive the car from Jaguar’s Coventry headquarters, in the British Midlands, some 700 miles to Geneva. The car averaged nearly 70 miles per hour on that desperate dash, which included thick fog in Dunkirk, France, and arrived with 20 minutes to spare.
The E-Type was introduced to the press by Jaguar’s founder, William Lyons, at the Restaurant Hotel du Parc des Eaux-Vives, a vast French pile of a place set in a park by Lake Geneva. Journalists were taken on a hill-climb course to substantiate claims made for the car’s engine in news releases.
They had long hours to discuss the principles and details of the best engine they could imagine. From these brainstorming sessions emerged the twin-cam XK engine, whose output, durability and smoothness became legendary.
The E-Type’s price — $5,595 for the roadster and $5,895 for the coupe in the United States, equivalent to about $42,000 today — was about half that of an Aston Martin or a Ferrari.
Stylistically, the car appeared to come from the future. With its dramatic oval face and sleek body, as feline and predatory as the Jaguar name promised, it arrived into a world of tailfins like a jet fighter among prop planes.
“It is impossible to overstate the impact the E-Type had when it was unveiled,” said Ian Callum, the design director of Jaguar Cars, who as a young man fell under the spell of the E-Type and the XJ6 sedan.
The E-Type was the successor, as its name suggested, to Jaguar’s C-Type and D-Type racecars, both of which had accumulated brilliant competition records, including a string of wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the 1950s.
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