ROBERT COUCHER
The Driver
There is a chilled dude who drives around London in a metallic sky-blue Jaguar E-type Fixed Head Coupé. I have admired him on occasion for the past ten years or so. He is usually wearing a crisp white shirt and tie and looks incredibly smart, so I can only assume he’s driving to and from work. He’s a big guy and good-looking in an Idris Elba kind of way, and his E-type always appears immaculate and sparkling in the boring nose-to-tail of modern black/grey/silver boxes that make up today’s traffic. I hope to meet him one day and pay my respects – you need to be ineffably cool to commute though central London wearing a tie in a hot 1960s FHC.
An E-type will still stop people in their tracks. In today’s world they appear small and elegantly svelte, with lots of shiny chrome ‘jewellery’ to render them Space Age in a Back to the Future sort of way. Very early examples on skinny wire wheels look a bit odd when seen directly front-on or from behind, but most have received 6.5in wire wheels with slightly fatter tyres to widen their stance and fill out their wheelarches. In an urban setting the cars generally gleam and are accompanied by a lovely growl from that lazy sixcylinder engine. I almost bought an ‘E’ a decade ago but decided that beautiful, long, one-piece bonnet would be too easily knocked out of joint by careless London drivers parking their Chelsea tractors. So I went for my Jaguar XK140, which has stout bumpers akin to ’Roo bars. They have proven their mettle over time.
Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve been influenced by the cars my father drove when I was a youngster, and in the mid-1960s he had a metallic sky-blue 3.8-litre E-type Roadster, which was the most incredible thing in my entire life! Forget my bicycle, pellet gun and Action Man with his parachute, a drive in his out-of-this-world E-type was the epitome of excitement. Meanwhile, my mother drove a VW Beetle and most of the school lift club mums’ cars were Beetles, Mini-Minors, Austins, Peugeot 404s and so on, so the occasional blast to school in the magnificent Jaguar was always special.
The route consisted of a long uphill stretch just far enough away from home for the ‘E’ to be nicely warmed on arrival. Father would drop down into second gear, the lusty engine would wake up with a snarl and he’d overtake the entire procession of mums’ cars in one powerful leap. My feet would lift clean off the floor and my school cap would be pressed back into the seat, such was the acceleration. And roaring up to the school gates would have dozens of small boys scrabbling to get near this gleaming space shuttle.
But the most excruciating run was after a long day in the classrooms followed by rugby practice. Father would collect me and we’d dash across town to collect Chinese takeaway. Being half-starved after hours on the cold, wet playing fields, I found the aroma that filled the E’s snug cockpit almost unbearable. Chicken chop suey, sweet and sour pork, noodles and chow mein in buckets on the passenger floorboard were warmed by the exhaust. I can still smell it! Father would return as fast as he could and we’d arrive home, throw the takeaway containers onto the dining room table and devour the lot in double-quick time. Fast food came no faster.
Much to my anguish, he decided to sell the E-type when he realised that this was a car that could eventually kill him. I reckon the old-tech crossplay tyres and the infamous (and notoriously useless) Kelsey-Hayes bellows-type brake servo gave him a big fright on too many occasions. Also the original-style bucket seats induced serious backpain, and the E-type simply garnered too much attention. So he replaced it with a Lancia Aurelia GT, about as polar opposite a motor car as he could have found! At the time I couldn’t understand why he’d replaced the Roadster with some dark blue humpbacked old lump.
Of course, these days the E-type’s foibles and shortcomings can be rectified by the many specialists out there who have spent half a century developing upgrades that bring these fantastic cars up to date in terms of dynamic performance. Rather like the Eagle E-types you see on the cover.
Some years ago we road-tested an Eagle Roadster against a fully rebuilt and improved Aston Martin DB5, a much more expensive proposition when new. The Aston was beautifully styled and constructed, fast and capable – but, in comparison, the E-type functioned at a totally different level, being akin to a lightweight modern sports car: a scalpel versus a broadsword. Now that all those Chelsea tractors are fitted with parking sensors, it might be time for me to have a sorted E-type to catch up with that dude in his daily driver.
‘FATHER DECIDED TO SELL THE E-TYPE WHEN HE REALISED THAT THIS WAS A CAR THAT COULD KILL HIM’