The 'E' Type Forum

As I was flicking through "The Iconic E-Type" last night a few interesting things jumped out:

1. John Coombs "I bought five D-Type's from Jaguar in one lot - all at ?1,250 each." "Had a helluva job selling them."

2. Andrew Turvey on starting an E-Type on a cold morning - "turn off the choke completely, push the accelerator to the floor and hold it there whilst cranking the engine over. Usually the engine fires-up, struggles asthmatically for five seconds then dies. Hopefully, it will then fire-up again using a little choke and less throttle". Why? "....... throttle flat to the floor is to add huge amounts of air to the fuel that has already been drawn into the engine. The air/fuel ratio becomes correct and if we have a spark - hey presto!"

3. Harry Fulford E Type UK - "?100,000 to restore a 6 cylinder, ?120,000 to restore a V12"

4. David Cottingham DK Engineering agrees - E-Type = ?100,000 to restore
'60's Ferrari restoration - E x 3
'60's Maserati restoration - E x 2
'60's Aston Martin restoration - E x 2.5

5. Sir Jackie Stewart: "One day, we had his (George Harrison's) McLaren, Paul's McLaren and Rowan Atkinson's McLaren - all outside my front door. I was the only poor guy there!."

6. Andrew Turvey on spark plugs:
BP5ES - for all year round use on standard E-Type engines
BP6ES - for summer use and engines driven enthusiastically (can foul on rich mixtures or at high altitudes)
BP7ES - for tuned engines with increased horsepower

7. Philip Porter: "There were only 756 Home Market RHD 3.8 E-Type roadsters and 1054 RHD 4.2's - they are pretty rare cars"
Porsche made 60,000 356's
Maserati made 2,000 3500GT's
Aston Martin manufactured 1,100 DB4's, 1,020 DB5's and 1,800 DB6's

8. Jon Minshaw (Demon Tweaks): "The roadster is 529 FN. Again, I bought that from Harry at E Type UK - he's a really good guy"

9. Terry McGrath: "Series 2 1/2? The chassis numbers of the very late Series 2 cars started with prefix 2R, in lieu of 1R. They had chrome trim around the bonnet intake as per V12, but minus the grille, and they had plastic leaping Jaguar badges on the lower corners of the wings. They are quite rare given few were made and possibly there were no RHD versions."

10. Me - buy the bookazine, lots more similar stuff inside!

Interesting stuff there.

In particular the rarity of the E types you mention especially when you consider some of the numbers of other "rare" cars

Anyone have the total number of RHD S1 4.2 Coupe?

UK Market RHD 3.8 FHC = 1559
UK Market RHD 4.2 FHC = 1697
UK Market RHD 2+2 = 1225

UK Market RHD S2 OTS = 692
UK Market RHD S2 FHC = 909
UK Market RHD S2 2+2 = 870

UK Market RHD S3 OTS = 1735
UK Market RHD S3 2+2 = 1827

All tiny quantities in the scheme of car production.

So generally there seems to be more FHC cars built that OTS.

Still relatively rare when you consider how many 356's were built etc.

For the total number of RHD you have to add in the RHD cars sent to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia, Hong Kong and Japan.....probably won't add many, but a few more!

John's (Kingzetts) 3.8 OTS is an original Hong Kong car I believe.

I think Porter was trying to show the UK Market RHD cars are rare, mostly to prove a point it has to be said.

These are the only photos I can find of the S2 1/2 cars Terry McGrath refers to (second one has 'Jag'Eyes' fitted) aka the Lipstick E-Type.

There are several of the late cars with chrome trim on xkedata.com if you look at the end of the S2 listings.

Pete

Interestingly there are only three cars with the 2R suffix on XKEdata and one of those has a conventional bonnet, the second has no pictures so it leaves us with this one:


Leapers on the side and chrome mouth surround.

Assuming you mean 2R prefix I'm not sure where you are looking David. A quick glance reveals half a dozen in just a few pages, such as:

2R13640
2R13655
2R13673
2R13680
2R13689
2R13696

etc. etc. All with plenty of pics.

Thanks Pete, I had set the search parameters incorrectly.