A new era

BACK IN 1977, there weren’t any books dedicated to the E-type. Although Paul Skilleter’s excellent Jaguar Sports Cars gave a superb historical perspective, no author had told the E-type story warts and all: its history and racing, plus living with a car that had yet to reach the soaring values of recent years.

So that is precisely what the fun-loving Chris Harvey did in his book E-Type: End of an Era, which has continued in several reprints and is still a splendid read today. His knowledge came from pushing the envelope, terrorising the streets in his 4.2-litre E-type. Today, a 3.8, it leads a much gentler life.

It was with enormous sadness that Paul Skilleter wrote Harvey’s obituary in the March/April 1995 issue of (then bi-monthly). Chris died of a heart attack too young, at the age of 53, while on holiday in Portugal with his wife Mary. Paul had known Chris since 1973, when Chris had worked as a sub-editor on newspaper. He’d wanted to show Paul his E-type, which Paul recalls as, “A hard-worked and slightly disreputable-looking machine.”