Portrait of a Motoring Icon
It's the golden jubilee year of the legendary Jaguar E-Type, and the design is as covetable today as it was back in 1961.
By Estella Shardlow on Wednesday 31st August, 2011
This has been a year for remembering, relishing, celebrating the Jaguar E-Type. As if we ever forgot it. The legendary marque, famously called “the most beautiful car in the world” by Enzo Ferrari, is celebrating its golden anniversary and it looks just as sleekly, sportily covetable as it did slinking down the Kings Road half a century ago.
Unveiled at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show, Sir William Lyons’ creation grabbed headlines from the offset. Stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Grace Kelly, Steve McQueen, Tony Curtis, Britt Ekland and Brigitte Bardot snapped up their own, and Frank Sinatra is reported to have declared “I want that car and I want it now” when he laid eyes on the two-seater at the launch.
Engineering and aesthetics are in perfect harmony in the E-Type. Sculptural and elongated, with the A-pillar poised daringly far back and the snout stretching on and on, its profile is unmistakable.
In 1996 it became the third car to enter the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York, where it sits besides modern masterpieces by Picasso, Rothko and Rauchenburg. “It perfectly suits the criteria of a landmark design object, ” remarked the museum’s then-chief curator Terence Riley and said it topped their wish list thanks to its “seminal impact on overall car design”.
Design commentator Stephen Bayley has eulogised about its phallic form, linking its exaggerated, suggestive proportions to the new liberated spirit and amplified sexuality of the Swinging Sixties. Emerging from the post-war austerity that hung over Britain during the 50s, the E-Type captured the decade’s zeitgeist, one that was all about optimism, swagger and hedonism. Christopher Mount, who was Riley’s assistant in the MoMA Department of Architecture and Design, likens it to “the Stones, Beatles and Kinks, and [it] is as timeless as their music.”
The secret of the E-Type's success is largely down to the fact that it boasted both brains and beauty, however.
Its engine was a continuation of the revolutionary twin-cam 3.4 litre XK that went into production in 1949. This was the greatest engine of the era, propelling Jaguar’s C and D types to victory at Le Mans throughout the 50s. Lyons appointed senior engineer William Heynes to develop a grand-touring roadster that would take the best of the rally-winning D-type and replace the tired XK150 model. With technology for modern disc braking and such a powerful engine already in place, Heynes’ team were free to focus on making a car with a revolutionary look and feel.
This is where Malcolm Sayer comes in. Thanks to his wartime experience at the Bristol Aeroplane factory he had a cutting-edge understanding of aerodynamics and helped Jaguar devise an ultra-streamlined vehicle, eschewing flat lines for a subtly rippling, elliptical physique. It was aircraft technology innovatively applied to car design for a lighter, faster ride than most motorists had ever experienced.
Meanwhile, its handling was perfected thanks to Bob Knight’s design for independent rear suspension, giving each wheel its own pair of springs that prevented it skipping at the back and minimised vibration.
The 50th anniversary has given us all an opportunity to coo over its high-tech credentials and lust after its beauty, with a host of golden jubilee tributes from an exhibition at London’s Design Museum to a record-breaking parade at Silverstone Classic. But really, like any true design classics, the E-type has never gone out of style; it will sit alongside Eames chairs, Chanel boucle jackets and Savile Row suits in the 20th century’s great hall of style and substance.
