The coolest of cats
IT LOOKED LIKE NOTHING ELSE ON earth and cost a fraction as much as a comparable Ferrari. It wasn’t conceived with competition in mind, yet had scored its maiden race victory within a month of being launched at the Geneva Motor Show – and that just a couple of days after the winning car had rolled from the production line. The Jaguar E-type remains one of the most striking products from a decade ripe with innovation – and the car here, ECD 400, is among the most significant of the breed.
It might have shared a few styling cues (and disc brakes) with Jaguar’s Le Mans-winning C-and D-types, but the E’s suspension and torquey 3.8-litre straight six were designed to complement touring rather than cut-throat combat. It was suitable, though, for the FIA’s newly introduced Production GT class, so Jaguar earmarked a batch of seven cars for relatively gentle modification (including higher compression, gas-flowed head, bespoke trumpets, lightweight flywheel and closer-ratio ’box). Equipe Endeavour and John Coombs Racing entered one car apiece for the 1961 Fordwater Trophy at Goodwood on April 3. They would have been driven by Graham Hill and Roy Salvadori, had the cars yet been fully assembled…
They were barely finished by the time the BARC’s Spring Meeting came around two weeks later at Oulton Park. Despite the lack of preparation time, Hill took in November 2001: “The brakes were probably fine for touring, but not track action, not even on a qualifying lap. A decision was made to rush the Jags back to Coombs to sort the brakes. For some reason, Graham’s Equipe Endeavour car was given new pads and discs, but I was just given pads. Eventually the ridges on my discs from the day before just chewed up the new pads, so Graham got past me at about half-distance.”
