In defence of the V12 E-type | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

I’ve known Mike for even longer than that, and to this day still get calls from people surprised to see me popping up on the show as indeed I did when I bought my beloved 1958 ripple bonnet Citroën 2CV freshly restored by Edd China and the Wheeler Dealers crew.

But it was a rather different machine on last night’s show: a Series 3 V12-powered Jaguar E-type.

When I was young, I was fantastically sniffy about the last generation of Jaguar’s most fabled sports car, largely because I’d been educated to believe that unless it was Series 1 3.8 with a Moss box (or an early 4.2 with a Jaguar box at a pinch) it wasn’t worth the time of day. The later cars were heavier, uglier, flabbier – just plain worse in every important regard.

But then I drove a V12 quite a long way – all the way from Coventry to Geneva, in fact – in convoy with the first prototype 3.8 roadster, jumping from one to the other at every available opportunity. 

As an aside, one of my less envious claims to fame is to be surely the only person ever to have apparently blown up both prototype E-types. The engine of the coupé, registration 9600 HP, I blew to bits at near 150mph on the Millbrook Speed Bowl trying to establish its maximum speed.

While on the way to Geneva, I looked in the roadster’s mirror and couldn’t help noticing everything behind the car had turned white as I towed what appeared to be the biggest cloud of smoke I’d ever seen down a French autoroute at a speed I won’t be owning up to here. Mercifully it turned out merely to be steam, caused by a core plug making a bid for freedom from the engine block, and three hours later, when the engine had cooled a new plug had been fitted, we were Geneva-bound once more.

The point of the story is that while the 1975 V12 – a roadster and the last E-type built by the factory in period – was indeed softer and less attractive than the purist 1961 original, it was actually a far nicer place to pass the time on that journey. I fit into it easily, which could never be said of the earlier car, it was more comfortable and, lest we forget, came with a mighty 5.3-litre V12 under its still gracefully curving bonnet. Tuned for torque rather than outright power, it provided a kind of smooth as silk performance that suited the character of the car to perfection.

So, I don’t see those later cars as poor relations anymore, as long as they have V12 engines and manual gearboxes. They are just a very different kind of E-type to those that made all those headlines at the start of the 1960s. Yes, if pushed I’d still have an early car because I’d prefer its looks and agility, but if you begged to differ, and told me the space, comfort and effortless performance meant more, I would be the very first to understand.