Jaguar’s E-Type is a real icon. Not in the overused Instagram comment section, but a true bona fide icon. The shape turns almost every head, and yes, by law we should mention that Enzo Ferrari said it was the most beautiful car in the history of Everything. It makes a wonderful sound, and in its time it was the absolute bomb.
No matter how much you love it, e-types are beautiful cars with Sixties engineering and dynamics. Some have stood the test of time and drive like a dream. Others are ropes of money for people with beards to pull over. Of course, there are companies that will create your perfect E-Type for a price, but it has a very specific problem: they are not Jaguar. These are people in luxury barns with expensive parts and hammers.
A few years ago, Jaguar decided to go into the E-Type restoration game itself with the E-Type Reborn project. Jag’s plan is to reclaim Series 1’s (1961-68) E-types, the most beautiful of fate, who had something of a life, and return to their original glory.
Customers can choose between a coupe or a roadster, a 3.8 or 4.2 liter car, left or right. While an E-Type may enter a bit of a grind from Jaguar Land Rover’s Classic division, it will leave as if it somehow jumped directly from the line in the 1960s to the 2020s. In addition to his journey, Jaguar engineers will have 60 years of experience in repairing the things that made E-types appear. They also have modern tools at their disposal to ensure that things in the 60s match the size at which they were originally designed. A Reborn E-Type is a complete reset that takes the car back to perfect condition.
For just under $ 400,000 (£ 295,000 to be exact) you can have your own old / new E-type. If you want to spend more money on it, you can specify a series of sympathetic upgrades to make it easier to live with. A Synchromesh gearbox is a good (and essential) start; Series 2 E-Type brake pads will help stop better than the hopeless Series 1 work; and better cooling is probably a good step to keep that glorious XK engine healthy.
According to Jaguar, the resulting car will be a standard for winning stores. Easy to claim; difficult to meet. But Jag’s internal team consists of engineering wizards, which means the car out there is perfect. The leather is spotless, smells like the inside of an expensive handbag and feels smooth when you sit on it. The skins of the trunk look so fine that you feel guilty when you put a bag of pillows and hugs in it. Each switch is perfectly weighed, each doing its thing with a reassuring click. The panels fit properly. While tall people may struggle to fit in the cozy cabin of the fixed-head car, they play with the stick-thin wooden steering wheel while straightening their necks. It all feels … right. And that’s before you press the power button. You thought the trailers were good? Wait until the movie.
A short pause is followed by the glorious XK engine barking live. The cabin shakes gently and a wonderful hum bounces off every available surface. The sound is a throwback to a time when engines were joyful, noisy things with their own characteristics, when hard power points could tell exactly what would come without looking.
Suppressing the surprisingly light clutch is easy enough. Putting it in first is a striking but rewarding experience, which makes you easily hum off the line. At low speeds, the steering is without assistance, even in a car weighing 2600 pounds, but it gets easier the more speed you throw at it.
Let the gas tickle gently, and after a while the car moves to illuminate the car forward. Stitch harder and build the pace with gentle urgency, like someone hurriedly doing a kind of graceful walk / running down a busy corridor. While the 265 hp, 4.2-liter straight six of 284 lb-ft, which fits on Jaguar’s test car, may look large, the peak power can be high in revs. Jaguar says the Reborn E-Type will crack 0-60 within 7.0 seconds and move up to 153 mph. It’s honestly fast enough; the E-Type may be as new as it gets, but its dynamics are six decades old. The steering does not give good feedback according to the standards of the current century. Its brakes are better than a standard Series 1 E-Type, but they are still obsolete by today’s standards. The suspension is soft and leans you into corners.
The E-Type is not meant for cutting peaks, but for making your presence known to the world while sailing. Hold the throttle, wait until 3000 rpm passes, and you’ll hear the car explode all over the countryside, feel the nose gently pick up as you pass, from gear to gear through its wonderfully carved four-speed manual gearbox, and watch the world viewers gawp at their dream car shooting past. It’s soft, and yes, braking requires more planning than you’re used to, but who cares? Enjoy the ride, do not hammer through it and end it early.
You can see where cars like the F-Type get their personalities. Okay, the F is fast fast, but it’s also softer than anything else out there. It’s a relaxed way to go fast, a smooth way to enjoy the journey rather than rushing to the destination (though it’s quite exciting when you’re in a hurry). Grace, space, pace, and all that; the E and F types share more than a naming convention. They have a spirit.
Jaguar’s Classic team set a high standard with the Reborn E-Type. It’s not a perfect car to drive, as no E-Type is, but a perfect E-Type. It really is a wonderful thing to be a part of.
This content is created and maintained by a third party and imported into this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may find more information about this and similar content on piano.io