British Motor Museum pays tribute to Jaguar style icon with secret models
New exhibition celebrates evolution, with previously-unseen Sayer models
Anew exhibition at the British Motor Museum, celebrating 60 years of the E-type, features previously-unseen studies from designer Malcolm Sayer. Unearthed by his family, the precious, fragile originals have been scanned and 3D-printed by Jaguar’s design department to create durable exhibits for the Museum to keep. The exhibition opens to the public on 17 May.
Sayer’s models
It’s the first time these visions for future Jaguars have been seen in public, as collection manager Tony Merrygold explains. ‘Malcolm Sayer was an aerodynamicist, who designed cars as he would aircraft. He mathematically calculated low-drag ellipses, and the car shape was the result of this maths rather than a styling sketch. He would give his tables of calculations over to modelmakers who would turn them into coherent car designs, like these.
‘We’re not precisely sure what the green model is for, but we do know that in the late Sixties Jaguar had a plan for a racing car with a mid-mounted 3.0-litre XK engine. We suspect this is what this is. This model predates the better-known XJ13 prototype, and we can see where Sayer has cut out sections at the rear and added what look like diagonally-hinged wings, most likely adjustable trim flaps rather than air brakes. It’s similar to what Ferrari was doing at the time.
‘The streamliner is even more mysterious. It appears to have just been an exercise, but it looks like a combination of Sayer’s D-type and one of Donald Campbell’s Bluebirds. Anything Sayer did for Jaguar would have been to a plan approved by Sir William Lyons, but there isn’t much by way of writing accompanying this car. It’s clearly a racer, and with its streamlining it might be a speed-record car – MG was building some very similar cars for this purpose at the time – but we don’t know because the paperwork has been destroyed. Any ideas that didn’t work were binned by Lyons, so we can be thankful that Sayer thought to take his models home and hide them in his shed to prevent their destruction.’
Jaguar C-type
Merrygold has curated a selection of cars to demonstrate the evolution of the E-type concept, beginning with this rarely shown C-type. This 1953 car was one of the 43 C-types to be sold to private owners when new, in this case Italian racing driver Mario Tadini, who entered it in that year’s Mille Miglia, although he failed to finish. After the race it spent more than two decades hidden away in a Swiss collection.
‘It reveals the origins of the E-type idea,’ says Merrygold. ‘In 1950, two XK120S raced at Le Mans and finished fairly well, but driver Leslie Johnson knew that the XK engine was reliable enough to win, the car just needed to be lighter and more aerodynamic. So Bill Heynes designed a spaceframe chassis and Malcolm Sayer was brought in as an aerodynamicist from Bristol Aeroplanes to devise a streamlined body. The C-type won first time out at Le Mans in 1951. By 1953 the Ferraris were just as fast, but the Jaguar’s advantage was disc brakes. It could brake later and harder into corners – as much as 200 metres after the Ferraris. All the elements and people who went on to create the E-type can be found in the C-type.’
Modsports E-type
Unseen in motor sport since an accident in 2001, Peter Griffiths’ racing E-type represents the ultimate evolution of the E-type concept.
‘It was built in the Seventies as Series III E-type production ended, to compete in Modsports (Modified Sports Cars), but although there are some production components in its structure, it hasn’t actually got a chassis number – it wasn’t ever a production car. Fred Cliffe built it.’ With no need for road-legality, Modsports cars were often built on aftermarketreplacement chassis.
‘Its V12 is production-based, but it’s enlarged to 7.3 litres with six Weber carburettors, and boasts serious aerodynamics including a rear wing from an XJR-9. It was timed at 184mph at a Modsports race in 1988.’