The E Type
 

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Have a lovely one in the shop right now!

Cheers

My dear friend, a 50+ year PCA member had an E Type as a kid back in the 60's. He likes to tell the story of how his mother named his car that he was constantly repairing "Flattery"....."Looks good, sounds good, gets you nowhere!"

I bought a '71 E-type 2+2 with a bad motor (but it ran) in 1980. Pulled the bonnet (took three grown men & a mule to move it). Pulled the engine/trans (we're going to need a bigger hoist) & completely disassembled. The short block was about as complex as a Ford inline six-cylinder. The Borg Warner transmission could be rebuilt with a Ford kit, three speed auto as I recall.

But the cylinder head, wow, what a piece. Out of the merk and crud came this beautiful aluminum casting, DOHC. Took forever to dial in the valve clearances with individual buttons. Fortunately a nearby dealer would allow me to trade buttons back & forth from their stock until I had the clearances spot on. I must have had those cams in & out 20 times before I had it.

I still remember getting it all back together & hitting the key for the first time. It blew a ton of white smoke from assembly lube, I set the dwell & the timing, and it settled down and ran like a Swiss watch.

Like the G body 911's of the same era, it was just a hoot to drive and very reliable once you worked out all the bugs (and said a little prayer to the Prince of Darkness every time you turned the key to started it). A real automobile.

Paging Thom

The early cars are the best by far!

They'll always be a beautiful car but if I ever owned one the first thing I'd do is install a power steering kit. Just one real issue: Reliability. Years ago (late 80s) I looked at a "cheap" V12 in a mechanics workshop. It had only done about 90,000 km but it needed a top end rebuild. The owner wanted to get rid of it.

Had I bought that car it would have been worth real money now but at the time they were an unknown.

After not buying a peach of a 68 E type, I just decided that I needed to live a little bolder.

And bought a 911. That was about 2008.

First of 3 Porsche’s.

So they aren’t all bad!

Let us not forget that lovely XKE converted into a hearse in Harold and Maude. One of the greatest movies of my lifetime...serenaded by Cat Stevens.

Brings back memories.

Thanks for posting that video. Had no idea who Magnus Walker was, but his take on those XKE’s was spot on.

His assessment is spot on. Mine left me stranded a couple of times but that’s probably down to my fault. They do understeer and feel a little under tired and they really are cramped inside but they are powerful, smooth and breathtakingly beautiful. I will have another one. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1646923185.jpg

You're very welcom!!! The E-Type has always been a favorite of mine.

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Interesting. I need to watch that movie again.

https://blog.consumerguide.com/harold-maude-car/


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https://www.imcdb.org/movie.php?id=67185

"The brain dead super model of the sports car world. All of your friends are envious as can be to see you with her, but they have no idea what your life at home is like."

If I had enough money, I'd have one. Even if it was a pain to live with, it's so pretty that it would be enough to be able to look at it from time to time.

My E-Type and other Jags converted me to Porsches. It's a bit like Brit bikes - turns owners into mechanics and Jap bike owners.

The E-Type also inadvertently lead me to my 911. Back in the late 90s I was finally at the point where my wife and I felt comfortable getting a sports car. I've always thought the E-Type is one of the most beautiful cars in the world (who doesn't?) so it was definitely high on the list. One day when I was traveling I drove past a Series II version in pretty good shape with a note on the window advertising it for about $20,000, which was a solid but not spectacular price at the time for a solid but not spectacular car.

I was immediately smitten and went home to my AOL dial-up link to dream over E-Types. Back in the early days of the internet there really were some nice enthusiast sites with good information written by people who wanted nothing more than to share their passion. So I found and bookmarked every E-Type site I could find. Everyone said the same thing: E-Types get a bad rap for reliability because people who drive them don't know how to maintain them. They just need a little more attention and they'll be fine. I was totally falling for that line when I found an article written by a Jag enthusiast trying to make the point about E-Type maintenance = E-Type reliability. He wrote up a little maintenance manual of things you needed to do yearly, a couple of times a year, monthly, weekly, and then he got down to things you needed to do every time you drove it. At that point I decided that the Jag enthusiasts weren't describing maintenance, they were completing ongoing repairs.

So after a bit of research on reliable sports cars, I returned to my other first love and bought my 911 where maintenance and reliability mean the same in German and American English. British English appears to use the same words in a different way.

The best two days in the life of a Jag owner: The day you buy it and the day you sell it.

You're certainly not alone in thinking that. Back in the late '90s, the E-Type was featured in an exhibit entitled "REFINING THE SPORTS CAR: JAGUAR'S E-TYPE" at New York City's Museum of Modern Art.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1646939823.jpg

His car looks an awful lot like that one pictured