A FEW OF THE FIRST
LIKE MANY AMBITIOUS over-reaches, the unveiling of the Jaguar E-type to the world’s press at the Parc des Eaux-Vives in Geneva, just before the Geneva motor show on 15 March 1961, was a fraught and nail-biting affair. The handbuilt fixed-head coupé prototype, wearing registration number 9600 HP, had been driven flat-out from Coventry by Jaguar PR man Bob Berry and arrived with only 20 minutes to spare. Speed, exhaustion, blind panic and an ecstatic mobbing by the press led Sir William Lyons to order test driver Norman Dewis to get straight into a matching roadster at the works and to make the same 600-mile journey that very night so it too could be on parade first thing the next morning.
With its stunning, if somewhat caricaturish, bodywork, penned by aerodynamicist and former aircraft engineer Malcolm Sayer, the E-type looked like no other car. Advanced engineering employed aeronautical-inspired construction techniques, with a combined monocoque and spaceframe plus what became the trademark Jaguar independent suspension and disc brakes all round: supercar stuff at the time. Yet what really amazed were the comparatively reasonable prices: £2196 for the Coupé and only £2097 for the roadster (about £38,000 in today’s money). Jaguar planned to build 250, but orders had topped 500 by the end of the Geneva Salon, and over the next 14 years more than 72,000 were built.
Contemporary rivals from Ferrari and Aston Martin cost a whole lot more – and you had to wait months for delivery,
