Lord Lichfield with his E-Type

Motoring Editor Peter Carroll looks back at half a century of the nation’s favourite sports car – the E-Type:

It’s not hard to understand the allure of the Jaguar E-Type, the slinkiest Big Cat ever. You’ve only got to look at it.

Whether in coupe or convertible form its lines are sensuous, athletic and graceful – and it regularly tops polls as the most desirable car of all time.

Even Enzo Ferrari had to admit it was “the most beautiful car in the world,” while the brilliance of Malcolm Sayer’s low-slung, thrusting design led to the E-Type being installed as a permanent exhibit in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The E-Type was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in 1961 and caused a sensation with its cutting-edge style and muscular performance.

Fast

This was the first modern Jaguar. And it made its predecessor, the XK150 – a fine car in its own right – look positively dowdy in comparison.

With a 3.8 litre straight six under the bonnet and lightweight construction the E-Type was said to be capable of 150mph – but with looks like that, who cared how fast it went?

The first examples arrived in the UK in autumn of 1961, priced at £2,256 and 15s, including purchase tax and the all-important optional wire wheels – that’s the equivalent today of just £38,000, making the E-Type the world’s first ‘affordable supercar’.

Celebrities such as George Best, Brigitte Bardot, Tony Curtis and Steve McQueen queued up to buy them and the E-Type became as synonymous with the swinging sixties as the Beatles and the mini-skirt.

Unsurprisingly, it did very well for Jaguar, with sales of more than 70,000 in a career spanning 14 years and three generations. America was the most important market, accounting for some 60 per cent of all production.

This year the E-Type celebrates its 50th anniversary, with little sign that its appeal is diminishing.

Mike O’Driscoll, Jaguar’s managing director and chairman of Jaguar Heritage says: “Half a century of progress has not diminished the significance of the E-Type. It was a sensation when it was launched, and remains Jaguar’s most enduring and iconic symbol.

“The E-Type is simply one of the most exciting cars ever created and a legacy to the genius of Jaguar’s founder, Sir William Lyons.”

It has also had a huge bearing on the look of Jaguar cars ever since. The firm’s modern day design director Ian Callum says it is impossible to overstate the impact the car made on its launch.

“Here was a car that encapsulated the spirit of the revolutionary era it came to symbolise.”

Jaguar plans to celebrate the car’s Golden Jubilee with a series of high-profile motoring events throughout 2011. And playing their part will be the 1,000-plus members of the north Worcestershire-based E-Type Club.

The organisation was set up by Jaguar expert Philip Porter, a former airship pilot, who has written more than a dozen books about the firm’s cars.

He owns ’9600 HP’, the earliest E-Type in existence and the original launch and road test car that set the 150mph legend.

Anniversary

He also owns a red roadster registered ’848 CRY’, which was raced in 1961 and later appeared in The Italian Job, alongside the Minis for which the film is best known.

And it will be the latter car that will lead the way on the Italian Job Tour which the E-Type club is organising as part of the anniversary celebrations.

Porter describes the E-Type as ‘the most exciting of sports cars’.

He says: “The E-Type blended stunning, sculptural design with superb British engineering to produce a car that was not only seriously quick but also reliable, usable and thus very satisfying to own.”

Today, E-Types are collectors’ cars and prices have increased greatly over recent years with values ranging, depending on model, history and condition, from £25,000 to more than £100,000.

The most sought-after are the dozen or so aluminium-bodied cars, known as the Lightweight E and built by Jaguar for racing, which command sums in excess of £4 million on the rare occasions that they change hands.

In Porter’s opinion, if the E-Type had not been produced in such high quantities, the remaining examples would be among the most valuable classic cars in the world.

“The ‘normal’ E-Types would be more valuable if people realised that certain models are actually rarer than they are perceived to be. Aston Martins and Ferraris can be at least three times as valuable, yet some are no rarer than some models of E-Type.

Perhaps the only real surprise concerning the E-Type is the fact the Jaguar has not capitalised on its enduring appeal by reviving it.

But then it is always going to take a truly special car to maintain the pedigree of its glamorous predecessor.