LIVING THE DREAM

It is true that I am towards the younger end of the E-Type ownership spectrum. Somebody on the E-Type forum did ask about people's ages and while I don't think I was quite the youngest, I wasn't far off. That means I didn't grow up with E-Types or see them on the road when I was a kid, but I've always had an interest in classic cars. At university I used to read the classic car magazines, but whereas the cars featured in something like Classic and Sports Car were always out of reach, ones in the more mainstream titles seemed to be attainable. The E-Types were featured regularly and seemed to be the pinnacle of things you could aim for, so it had always been in my mind as something aspirational while things like Ferraris and Maseratis – well, I had no idea how you got that kind of thing.

I was studying Transport Design at Coventry University, so I was surrounded by car enthusiasts. The course covered every kind of transport apart from aircraft, but attracted mainly lads who wanted to draw sports cars! You'd think that the E-Type might have figured in that course as in some ways it defined an era of sports car design, but while it was a regular favourite, it was also one that people tended to steer clear of. We did some projects called Spiritual Successors where