Independent rear suspension was a genuine innovation that gave the E-type a comfortable ride and superb roadholding

If you clicked on the link, caught sight of George Bamford’s admittedly beautiful pictures of the Series 1 Fixed Head Coupé and immediately thought, ‘Oh God, not another feature about the E-type’, then rest assured, we know exactly where you’re coming from. What can you say that’s new about the most famous Jaguar ever made?

Nothing, is the short answer. More column inches of purple prose have been devoted to the E-type than any other car (although Porsche’s 911 must run it close). So let’s not try. Let’s take it as a given that the E-type is as beloved as the late Queen Mum and just as much a symbol of everything that put the Great into Britain.

Let’s ask, instead – why has this car, which was a long way from perfect even when it was brand new in 1961, achieved a near-mythical status? And why has Jaguar yet to come up with anything more memorable?

The E-type is certainly one of a mere handful of British vehicles that are instantly recognisable to people who have absolutely no interest in motoring. It’s become a mobile cliché of the Swinging Sixties; Mike Myers’ ‘Shaguar’ E-type in the Austin Powers movies was supposedly inspired by ’60s heart-throb Simon Dee driving away with the blonde in the E-type at the end of his TV chat show, Dee Time. Real-life celebrity owners such as footballer George Best (‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered…’) gave the E-type a louche, caddish image that was probably the last thing Sir William Lyons intended and yet was ironically in keeping with Jaguar’s well-established reputation as ‘the Bentley of Wardour Street’ – a thoroughfare in the heart of London’s Soho that in the 1950s was a synonym for sleaze and vulgarity.

This slightly unsalubrious image goes back a long way in Jaguar history; back, in fact, to the very beginnings of the company in the early 1920s, when 21-year-old Billy Lyons joined forces with his neighbour William Walmsley to manufacture Walmsley’s stylish motorcycle accessory. With its polished, aircraft fuselage-like body and matching ‘Moon disc’-style wheel, Walmsley’s sidecar was undoubtedly caddish. He even named his prototype the ‘Ot-as-Ell!’ before switching to the more commercially acceptable Swallow brand name.

Lyons had an even more developed sense of style but matched it with a commercial acumen that sometimes shaded into miserliness. But this penny-pinching was key to Lyons’ success in his early years. His first ‘proper’ cars, the SSI and SSII of the early 1930s, aped the long, low style of the true grand tourers while hiding mundane Standard running gear – and hence appealing to the British middle class’s eternal desire for cheap glamour.

And cars scarcely came more glamorous, regardless of price, than the SS90 and more powerful SS100 roadsters that were introduced from 1935. These really were the ultimate cad’s cars, so impossibly rakish that they were almost caricatures, and the first of the three sports car milestones in the Lyons era – SS100, XK120 and E-type. But while the SS100, in particular, was a genuinely quick car, that didn’t deter the car snobs. The perception of a Jaguar in some circles as ‘the publican’s car’, owned by an extrovert with little taste but a bit of spare cash, has been remarkably persistent down the decades.

Looks and performance mark out the SS100 as the true antecedent of the E-type but there was still one vital ingredient missing – the XK twin-cam, straight-six engine that was to become as crucial to Jaguar’s success as William Lyons himself. Introduced in the XK120, by the time the E-type was launched it had benefited from 13 years of very intensive testing in the real world – not least, of course, in the Le Mans-winning C- and D-types. It provided the power and exhaust note of an exotic, and it also looked exactly right under the long bonnet of an E-type.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter, the E-type’s looks. Men and women are shallow creatures when it comes to judging by appearances, and the E-type has that kind of immediately accessible sex appeal that will never go out of fashion. It is the Brigitte Bardot of sports cars. Even the Italians were impressed: Enzo Ferrari reputedly called it ‘the most beautiful car ever made’ – though one suspects that, like most great quotes, this one may not be entirely reliable.

Great looks, fab engine; shame about the brakes, seats and gearbox. OK, that’s being slightly harsh, but the E-type was flawed even by the standards of 1961. The brakes were discs all round – good – but they weren’t up to keeping a hard-driven 140mph-plus E-type in check – bad. The simple bucket seats were not terribly comfortable and there wasn’t enough room for taller drivers, while the Moss gearbox was as slow and obstructive as it had always been in previous XKs. Rumour has it that it was designed for a pre-war truck.

On the other hand, the independent rear suspension was a genuine innovation (take that, Ferrari, with your beam rear axles – pah!) that gave the E-type a comfortable ride and superb roadholding. And that was a key reason why E-types could be raced, and win, straight out of the box, as drivers such as Graham Hill, Roy Salvadori and many more immediately proved. Jaguar’s reputation for building cars that really shifted without rattling the occupants’ fillings started with the E-type.

As so often happens, the first iteration of the E-type shape was the purest. In the real world beyond the fantasy one of advertising, buyers – and especially American buyers, who had long been Jaguar’s biggest customers, in every sense – wanted more room, more practicality. That led to the compromised proportions of the 2+2 coupé in 1966, and worse was to come when the beautiful faired-in headlights of the first-series cars lost their clear covers, and the light units were progressively moved forward within the cowls to meet new US regulations. In fact, it was better if you actually wanted to see where you were going at night, but the tipping point had been reached. This was in 1968, the year in which Jaguar would introduce the world-beating Jaguar XJ6 saloon, and it would be all downhill from here.

That’s not just a throwaway remark. Jaguar’s founder and chairman, Sir William Lyons, was ageing, as was much of his senior management, and the company was about to sink in the morass of the British Leyland empire. Lyons had hoped that what he saw as a ‘merger’ with BMC rather than a takeover would lead to financial benefits for Jaguar, but it had exactly the opposite result.