(first posted 8/5/2013) As a kid, my uncle the Naval Flight Officer drove a Jaguar XK-E. Both he and my Grandpa were car guys, and when my uncle visited we shared an easy familiarity with all things cars. He shared stories of his many adventures behind the wheel of his Jaguar, and between these tales and the taut lines of his roadster I entered a fantasy world called “XK-E”. At the time, that Jag represented the epitome of cool, and I burned with possessive fire.
Ten years later I knew a lot more about cars, and the prospect of driving such an unreliable and poorly packaged car seemed laughable. XK-Es used electronics from the dark prince, overheated even in Alaska and their bodies turned to Swiss cheese within two years of purchase. In one brief decade, I’d moved from childish fantasy to youthful snobbery.
Today, I look at this coupe and think, “If I did buy a Jag, this would be the one to get.” The 4.2-liter on its tail indicates it’s got the right engine and transmission combination, and the larger grill opening and unique marker lights indicate it’s a Series II.
Built from 1969 to 1972, the Series II still packed the traditional DOHC straight six, but included several improvements over the earlier cars. To improve cooling, Jaguar designed a wider radiator opening, and added electric fans underhood.
Inside, the Series II offered (optional) power steering and air conditioning to improve the behind-the-wheel experience. The dash used rocker switches rather than traditional Jaguar toggle switches, and the seats provided improved comfort. Cocooned in this luxury environment, I’m sure the driver never forgets he is wrapped in a sensuous and powerful icon.
This angle demonstrates why the coupe body isn’t for everyone, but I’ve owned several convertibles and prefer the coupe’s headroom and quieter interior. Without question, a top-down XK-E roadster has the purest lines ever offered by Jaguar, but this two-seater coupe gets the job done, and greatly outshines the ungainly 2 + 2 version.
I found this Jag in Los Angeles, on Paseo Del Mar, a street on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. As you might expect, the neighborhood is somewhat exclusive. Still, can you think of a better backdrop for this car than the Pacific Ocean? It seems appropriate that I found the car pre-positioned for this beauty shot.
While walking around the car, I decided to take a picture of the cowl area. This single shot demonstrates what Jaguar ownership is all about. The triple windshield wipers, the louvers cut into the hood for increased engine-bay cooling and the metal grille on the back edge of the hood all give you a feel for the complexity of this car. They also resulted in high labor costs during production, low production volume and high parts prices after purchase. Whoops! I’ve returned to that youthful snobbery I mentioned earlier. I really didn’t want to go down that road.
I thought about discussing Jaguar’s history in this post, since this car may well represent the pinnacle of Jaguar mojo. The later Series III cars featured an XK-E body that had been extended and reshaped to accept a larger (but heavy and troublesome) V-12 engine that reduced fuel economy just as the OPEC crisis hit. But the story of Jaguar is well known to most automotive enthusiasts and dammit, this car is meant to be enjoyed on a visceral level and not analyzed to death.
So look upon it with joy. Reach out to it with longing. And embrace this exuberant expression of automotive passion!
Automotive beauty (like ALL beauty) comes in infinite varieties…
…Having said that, is there any ground to argue that the original XK-E (in coupe OR convertible form) is not one of the most lovely shapes in the automotive world?
An Icon, pure and simple.
Thanks, Paul
Once upon a time I showed a picture of an XKE to a woman; she remarked how phallic the front of the car looked.
I should have retorted, “Sometimes a banana is just a banana.” Alas, I was too busy considering her point. It hadn’t occurred to me before.
An argument made by many people, including the NY Times and Vanity Fair-
http://www.google.com/#bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&fp=a7a801eebf8b2125&q=e-type+phallic
The woman & those journalists are an example of how thoroughly Freud’s fallacious pseudoscience has permeated popular thinking. He had no rational or evidential basis for his hasty generalizations about human nature.
Maybe *some* men connect long hoods & gun barrels with reproductive organs, but I don’t know how one can say this is true for *all* men.
Posted w/out comment…not that its needed.
I hate cars like this. “E” must stand for “exception” though.
Why I find these E-type Jaguars so incredibly beautiful is beyond me. I’d love to own one but know I never will “get there”.
Beautiful,complicated and expensive to buy and maintain.If I had the money things like that wouldn’t matter in the least!Hard to believe the design is over 50 it still looks stunning
A car so beautiful I made a T-shirt of it. In fact, it’s one of the most popular of my car-related shirts:
http://hollywoodloser.com/shirts/Jag_3.html
How much do I like these cars? I even lust after the widely condemned Series III with the V-12s, that’s how much. Although I’d undoubtedly become one of those owners who got fed up with that maddening mill and converted to a SBC 350. Frankly, with me, that might even happen if I owned one of the earlier Series I or II sixes. The SBC is like duct tape: there’s no problem it can’t fix.
Beautiful cars but expensive to buy and I guess in some places the parts must be getting hard to find, V12s are quite hard to find our gas went up in the 70s and stayed up it costs serious coin to feed one of these @$2,25L so very few survivors see much road time and there are plenty of survivors I know of several disused woolsheds stuffed with Jaguars in good condition so do the wrecking specialists that own them one outfit in my hometown exports Jaguar parts worldwide, but thanks to OPEC we were mostly spared the troublesome V12 but Jags were a very popular car in NZ back in the day and we have more than our share left so people like my Doctor rebuild them for export and Gem should she so desire a Jaguar MK2 new can get one in England from him today, and a constant stream of Jags arrive here to be rebuilt for their owners and more stock for the specialists.
The E-Type, to me, were what Jaguar WAS. The sedans…pretenders. And when the E-Type disappeared – time and reality catching up, I get that – when it disappeared, the “real Jaguar” was dead and buried, probably under the dust cloud which was the wreckage of British Leyland’s crash and burning.
I have never driven one. Never knew an owner. Never saw one except at a distance or in pictures. But to me, the covered-headlight E-Type was The Original. The later ones, complying with more and more strict regulations…were compromises.
Of the last E-Types…I seem to remember Car & Driver’s L. J. K. Setright commenting on the death of the E-Type:
“If a car is so expensive that it can only be afforded by palsied playboys, retired movie moguls, princes of petroleum; then you can expect that it will be engineered so that they can drive it like old men.” (loose quote)
Setright found the road manners of the final versions of the E-Type to be beyond atrocious. So, given the times and the economies of the car biz in those days, what happened had to happen.
Still, one can look with a child’s eye and dream….
Nice post, Paul. For die-hard aficionados, there’s a site called Eagle Speedster that you should definitely check out. Hand built in the U.K. (naturally), this is a modern iteration of the classic XKE roadster, with new Jag engines, bespoke interiors, and a subtle massaging of the body shell that is absolutely exquisite. Of course, at an entry point of close to a quarter million dollars, it ought to be. Still, if I won the Powerball…
This was by Dave Skinner, and it was nice indeed! Not an easy subject to do justice, either.
I’ve been on the road for the last five days, and fortunately we have quite the corps of writers to keep the site going.
Dave Skinner posted this, actually. First comment thanks Paul as well. Granted, Paul is to blame for this site being up in the first place, so yeah, thanks Paul!
EDIT: Wow, you must have just got home.
Ah… the E-Jag. Old girl friend said it best (after about 11 drinks): “It looks like a penis.”
Can’t say I have every particulary liked them- not truly exotic like a Maserati nor practical as a real world car like a 280SL or 240Z. Ah, who am I trying to fool? I’d have one in a minute if it were offered!
Well, that was always the pitch — priced so you wouldn’t see one on every other street corner, but gobs of sex appeal and less than half the price of the Italian exotics.
I once owned a V12 Coupe Series III automatic.
And although I had it for a very short while because I simply could not afford the expensive fuel in Europe, it was not as bad as people say.
We bought it cheap, very cheap because it lost cooling water, fearing for an expensive engine repair, it turned out to be a leaking radiator.
I loved it, the smooth V12 pulling away at any rev, it was quite comfortable too.
Although for E-type purists the V12 may be lowest in the E-type pecking order, I’d always go for a V12 if I desire one.
Then relibility, once youunderstand that any British Leyland car you buy is an unfinished product. life becomes more realistic.
I’ve owned a lot of British cars and to give a tip : the Lucas alternators have similar dimensions to a Bosch alternator.
These were used in the Ford Cortina and the Gemran made Ford Taunus, these cars were sisters.
If you buy a Ford Taunus Bosch alternator, it’ll go forever.
I have a ’69 OTS that was never abused. Its original, never rebuilt Lucas alternator gave out in 2017–forty-eight years after it left the factory. I refused to swap it for a rebuilt one and waited a month for that same, original one to be rebuilt, and to this day it works nicely. A well-taken -care-of E Type rewards its owner with reliability, when following the owner’s manual servicing intervals consistently, while an E Type treated in a rough, utilitarian manner and not taken to a competent Jaguar shop for its regular maintenance, will start to make expensive clanging noises and leaki oil… Putting in a Bosch alternator is desecration, and an E Type full of non-original parts loses value…
Probably some dreams are best left unfulfilled for many of us. I have lusted after an XKE since my freshman year in college in 1962 when I used to walk down the street from my dorm in Westerville, Ohio and admire a red XKE roadster that was often parked in the driveway of a classic thirties bungalow on that dead end street. Many years have passed and I still have that lust but more rational thoughts and decisions have kept it in the back of my brain. I must agree that the covered headlight version is my idea of a real XKE. I have never driven or ridden in one but that is something that may still see the light of day.
A month or so before I bought my new Camaro in 1984, the Cadillac dealer in a neighboring town had a white E type Jag coupe for sale in their showroom. I recall they wanted $ 10K for it. As I opened the driver’s door, I almost fell down due to the massive amounts of oil leaking from the car onto the showroom floor.
That killed my desire for the Jag. My bare bones 6 cyl Camaro was the closest I got to an exotic sports car, but my Camaro was an excellent trouble free car, although it was all show, no go.
I owned the topless twin to this car for a couple years (1976-78). It was a beautiful and fast car that always drew a crowd, even then when they were not terribly uncommon.
All cars have a unique dynamic, or “feel”, to them. The feeling in this car was that you were at the end of a “crack the whip” from sitting so far back from the front axle.
A friend of mine was on me from the moment he saw the car to buy it. After 2 years of wearing me down, I sold it to him for a small profit. The last I knew of him he still had it.
I really miss the days when unique cars were still just “used cars” and could be obtained by normal people.
I’ve always lusted after an E type but never had the temerity to buy one. Several years ago I answered an ad for a ’69 2+2 and actually test drove it. It was a major disappointment! Maybe it was the auto box but there was no magic there.
You have to remember it was designed in the 1950s after all!
I’m a sucker for music videos and cars. Beautiful car, good song & lyrics – too bad about the so-so footage. 🙂
A car that was exactly like a woman.. She would either treat you right, or make your life a living hell.
A great observation and so true.
From what I’ve heard and read, you have to treat the Jaguar right, take care of it, and it’s a pleasure to drive and own. Mistreat it, neglect to take care of it, and it will make your life miserable……..exactly like a woman, as you stated.
No wonder I never married a beautiful woman……or owned a Jaguar.
Instead, I drive a unexciting, reliable, low-maintenance Toyota…..and married a woman with the similar qualities. My bank account is also thankful.
I hope that Halwick is a pseudonym, or that your Wife never reads this!
I don’t know, Halwick… To go through life without experiencing, once in a while, the finer things in life?… I own a really nice, extremely original ’69 E Type roadster. I take very good care of it and service it at the correct intervals, and it rewards me with a most pleasant driving experience. It also brings lots of smiles to many people wherever it goes…
Exquisitely beautiful, but there seems to be no limit to the excuses fans make for the defects of this car. Seriously, I doubt if one has ever made it to 100,000 miles. Maybe we shouldn’t even consider it a car, as that word connotes some effectiveness at actual transportation. Just put it in museums to look at.
Quite simply the sexiest looking car ever made!!!
Not sure how I missed this the first time. These are now and have always been beautiful.
A parishioner at a church I used to attend had a Series III V-12 version of this car. She played the bagpipes of all things and somehow got the instrument to the church (supposedly in the passenger seat.) Hers was painted in the traditional “British Racing Green” or whatever that colour is called (and yes, I intentionally misspelled color for our friends across the pond ;o)…
I was playing guitar that day, and when it was time to leave, loaded up my instrument into the trunk of my Mustang. She elected to leave her bagpipes at the church. She went to start the Jag, and all we heard was click click click…. dead battery.
It was my pleasure to give her Jag a jumpstart with my Mustang. We were parked “Curbside”, so I turned my car around so my hood faces her bonnet. Good thing the cables were long enough. My Mustang’s battery is at the firewall on the passenger side, but her battery was amidships on the driver’s side with her bonnet opening in a most unusual way.
I loved it… not her misfortune obviously, but the opportunity to see one of these up close and personal in the metal, having always liked them as a kid. We got the V-12 started, and although running a little rough, it sounded great.
Turns out this was her hobby car and she turned her own wrenches (to a point). I suppose if you’re gonna have an old Jag, you need to be able to do that to save yourself some money.
Of course a lot of rich lawyers went to this church, and I think she was one of them. ;o)
Let’s get this car back in perspective –
If you have six minutes to spare, watch this 1968 Bud Lindemann video review of a 1968 Jaguar
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqLqDk-BVM
Then come back and tell me you don’t want one, if you can.
The essence of 1960s Jaguar was captured by the TV show “Mad Men” when one of the characters attempted to commit suicide by routing the Jag’s exhaust into the car – and the engine wouldn’t start. 🙂
That joke was set up earlier in the season when the agency got the Jaguar account and someone said “They never start”.
That was a classic scene. I’m sure Jaguar’s PR people were not happy with the producers of Mad Men. Of course the company only has itself to blame. ?
I remember way, way back in the early ’70s a fellow student had an E-type. I don’t remember what iteration. That was as close as I’ve ever been to one. I don’t know how a piano major could afford to have one of these, but there it was.
I want one. I probably have since i was a little kid.
And when I wasn’t driving it, I’d sit in a chair and just LOOK at it.
I’d find a way to put Series 1 headlamps/covers on it.
“This angle demonstrates why the coupe body isn’t for everyone”
Really? It must be the only single one out of 360*.
The other 359 look fantastic.
One of my neighbors, Vern Smith, drove a pale blue Series II convertible when he was going to law school at USF in San Francisco (the family had money). He picked me up one morning when I was hitchhiking to high school; it was a nice ride in a nice car. Don’t know what he drives currently; he became a judge in Marin County and is probably retired by now.
certainly looks better than the later versions.
And even later versions…. (in an odd sort of CC Effect, I just spotted this at the gas pumps coming out of BJ’s Wholesale Club 1/2 an hour ago)….
I like the XK8 convertible sooo much more than the E-Type …
I don’t really understand your point, Adam. The E Type OTS in your picture is a later version Series III. Actually, the black rubber over-riders indicate it is a ’74–the last real year of production.
Yup, the Series II coupe is the one for me. Just got back from checking Ebay and they’re not in reach at this time… Maybe a 2+2, I wouldn’t have to look at the roofline from the drivers seat.
It’s amazing how tiny these are in real life.
Yeah, I had a 70 series 2 willow green convertible. I bought the car when I was commissioned a Naval Officer and completely enjoyed it. As far as reliability it was pretty good but you had to maintain it. One odd problem was that the radiator cooling fans would burn out fairly often, Lucas Electrics. Let’s face it if you want reliability buy a Honda, this is a Jag. Would I want another, not really but I certainly am considering an F-type.
These Jaguars remind me of that ultra hot bipolar blond you once knew in college. You know, the one that would rock your world all night long, then chase you down the street holding a meat cleaver the next morning.
I can live with the chasing (heck, she’ll be in heels) It’s the catching that bothers me.
Great article, BTW.
Form over function in every respect. I barely fit in these comfortably and I’m not a Wookiee either.
The anti-911 if ever there was….. because, because, because, because, beecaauusse, of all the horrible hell it was!
I don’t get the love for this car. it’s proportioned like a damn clown shoe.
Na. Why take home a petulant princess when the ‘dog’s bollocks’ of the jaguar family is still available to mere mortals’ wallets. My ever faithful dream car…a 1966 Jaguar 420G.
CC effect strikes again, saw a E type coupe on my drive to work this morning stuck in traffic at some road works, looked like the guys daily drive.
Thanks for re-running this post. Whether or not you like this Jag or any other car is not really the point. The point is that the old car hobby is about cars that appeal to us on an emotional level. That’s what visiting this site so much fun.
Had one in the ’80s, just like this one, a beautiful ’68 fhc (fixed head couple as the Brits call it). It had only 38k miles when we traded a ’57 Olds convertible for it. Even so, it was already using some oil and it had the usual Lucas gremlins, annoying but easy to fix. It was finished in the very attractive Wedgwood (light blue gray) blue with a navy leather interior. To our eye the coupe is even more attractive than the roadster. It was fast and fun and every woman who saw it absolutely loved it. Of 200+ cars owned as a under-the-radar vintage car “dealer” aka serial car owner, this is one of only 2 that I wish I’d kept, sold, of course, to a lawyer. The other was a ’57 300C convertible.
I went goggle-eyed at the first one I saw, in the early ’60s. I remember thinking, “They don’t make cars like this…do they?” As if it had dropped in from Outer Space, since I’d sure never seen anything like it before. Honestly, who had?
Its streamlined beauty ran rings around anything else. As did its technology and appointments, superior to anything costing two and two and a half times more, which was functionally non-existent on US streets at the time.
I had a high school friend who had one in the very early ’70s – a “wrench”, who’d gotten a late Series I used and had its 4.2 singing. Plenty familiar with American V8s/muscle cars, I recall being astonished at just how *swift* it was, how well it handled the twisties at speed, and how wildly FAST and punchy it seemed riding around with one’s legs straight out and butt like 4″ off the ground.
That half a mile of low hood out front made it seem like the driver was at the controls of a rocket ship, not a car. One could practically feel the delay between the front wheels entering a corner and your body getting there. Which somehow managed to seem to exaggerate one’s sense of speed, not diminish it.
In every way the car was an “exotic”, yet sold for little more than a Corvette. Certainly nothing reflecting that the XK-E was in a completely different league.
It’s a shame that the younger posters on this site never had the chance to experience firsthand the indescribable pleasures of simply *seeing* a car like this, hearing it, getting close enough to smell its interior. And be able to recognize how far and away it outperformed other cars of its day, even if over half a century later the numbers or manners handling may not seem impressive. They sure as heck were at the time.
Hopefully some version of a Star Trek “hollow deck” virtual reality can get here soon enough that they too can enjoy the same sensations while some of us who did back in real time are still around, allowing us to share new experiences and old memories together while we can.
Decades ago, maybe in the late seventies, Brock Yates wrote an opinion piece in Car and Driver complaining about the high price used E-types were bringing when they were such abominable, steaming POS.
Seems like, today, that’s as true as it’s ever been. I guess the Jag’s seductive shape (especially the roadster) is enough to overcome a car that can still fail even under the most fastidious maintenance.
Was this car officially known as the XK-E or XKE in North America? I don’t recall hearing or seeing the E Type name until I started reading British car magazines. Though I see in the photos here that it was badged E Type. In any case almost any American kid who was interested about cars knew about XKE’s even if they were pretty rare.
The correct name for this car is E-Type fixed head coupe (often abbreviated “fhc”). In the US was XK-E commonly used.
Just as the correct name for an MGB convertible is MGB Tourer, not roadster.
The E-Type was what dreams were made of. As long as you didn’t own one.
I’m surprised no one quoted Enzo Ferrari having called it “the most beautiful car ever made”.
Well, a friend of mine bought a V12 after longing for it forever. After two years of “fixes daily” he threw out engine&gear Box and put in a Benz 280SE engine and auto trans. Consequently he was seen more often with that Jag. Reliable at last, he said!
Here’s my old ’69, it had 38k miles when I had it. Most enthusiast drivers prefer the XK six to the V12, but having ridden in a new V12 in ’73 it’s an amazing cruiser, so smooth, silent, and torquey. One must have one of each! lol
I will add that it’s often non-owners who parrot constantly the unreliability trope, in truth, as mentioned above by other actual owners, if properly maintained they were quite dependable, the key being that the car was used fairly regularly. Es tended to be toys for well-off owners and not used a lot, and cars don’t like this. When problems arose they were often small and niggling, often electrical, often accessories, but the basic XK Six and gearbox themselves were quite durable. Stuff like occasionally cleaning and using dielectric grease on the typical British spade contacts went a long way towards avoiding Lucas-itis. On the V12s it was the Lucas Fuel Injection (!) that became a bugaboo early on, but the engine itself was quite strong and durable, and the Ricardo-designed “Fireball” (shades of Buick!) re-designed heads added even more smooth power. I wish they had made a short-body coupe with the V12! The 2+2 did seriously degrade the body design.
Of course on Japanese and most US cars, even then one would not need to do stuff like clean and grease electrical contacts, but that just adds to the fun and commitment of owning an exotic car, right?
The design choice I am not fond of in the E type is the wrap of the windshield and the bend in the leading edge of the door above the hinges. Just raking the windshield a bit more and eliminating some of the wrap would straighten the door line.
Another aspect of the car is the engine. The bore spacing is not regular. Very odd, and a bit disturbing. That would be difficult to change, but would soothe my ruffled feathers.