JAGUAR E-TYPE S1 FHC
Year of manufacture 1961 Recorded mileage 66,337 Asking price £485,000 Vendor Hamann Classic Cars, Germany; 0049 1511 918 8300; hamannclassiccars.net WHENITWASNEW Price £1550 Max power 265bhp Max torque 260lb ft 0-60mph 6.8 secs Top speed 149mph Mpg 17.9
In the final 2021-dated edition of C&SC, it’s appropriate that one of our Classified picks is an E-type given that, as you’ll know unless you’ve been living under a rock since January, this year is the model’s 60th anniversary. Classic events around the world have been paying tribute to it and rolling out its most famous examples – and now you’ve a chance to own one of them.
Here we have 6162 RW, a Series 1 3.8-litre fixed-head coupé built on 27 September 1961 and used as a press, test and development car. In fact, it is one of the three original press cars, the others being 9600 HP, now in a private collection, and 77 RW, owned by the Coventry marque. This car was driven by the late Norman Dewis for high-speed testing, and was also used to evaluate ideas and modifications, especially on the suspension and interior, some of which made production – and vendor Hamann Classic Cars says most of these modifications can still be found on the car. For example, being an early E-type, it has a flat floor – although in this case, only on the passenger side.
In its role as a press car, 6162 RW was featured in Motoring News, and Belgian racer and journalist Paul Frère tested it for Quattroroute and Auto,
Motor und Sport, during which the Le Mans winner and F1 podium finisher drove it at Monza to sample its high-speed capabilities. He left impressed.
After more than a quarter of a century in storage, the car’s current keeper took ownership in the early 2000s. As you might expect it’s a matching-numbers example and still wears the patriotic Opalescent Dark Green shade with which it left the factory. Proof of its history is in the accompanying paperwork.
The apparently immaculate condition in which it appears today can at least in part be attributed to the fact that it was the subject of what the vendor says was a four-year, open-chequebook, ground-up restoration. It has done fewer than 2000 miles since that work was completed.
This is a piece of motoring history and opportunities to buy such cars don’t crop up too often – nor do they come cheap. While this would doubtless be a very special car to own, even more so here than with most other classics, there would be a sense of custodianship and responsibility in taking it on, and that could make some think twice about both buying it and enjoying it. Given the many miles of testing this car has completed in the making of an automotive legend, adding to that so the myth lives on is surely only right.