The 'E' Type Forum

I drive my 1969 OTS throughout the winter and find the hard top very useful. It is important to grease the rear rubber seal to avoid paint damage.

Was black the standard issue? Has anybody else had their hard top sprayed to match the body colour?

PeterH

Gloss Black was standard but if you asked them the factory would paint it in any colour you wanted. The Lightweights all had body colour hardtops for example and the first brochure showed the car with it fitted and painted to match the body:


Period photos of the E-Type with the hardtop are quite rare:



Personally I think they look superb in body colour and I have a picture somewhere of an OSB S1 done like that - fantastic!

There is no point in seeking the advice of the experts on the forum unless one follows such advice. Here are the consequences for others with black hard-tops.
Peter H
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u43 ... rdtop3.png

Peter

I think you are missing the chrome trim on the rear windows surround? CMC sell them:
"Pair of chrome mouldings for rear screen including joining pieces ?650.00 + VAT"

I think they look great in body colour

Prefer the body color two. Especially because black and red is not a nice duo.

My guess is Jaguar painted them all in black because it would have been impossible to keep hardtops in stock for every colour. Besides getting a paint match on a year old or so car would be difficult so they would have been sent to the dealer like that and they would have painted them to the customer requirements. If the hardtop was ordered with a new car it would have been painted body colour unless the customer specified otherwise.

Black and white go with any colour but look a bit boring except on black and white cars. I painted mine silver, the other 'universal' colour and it looked far nicer than it did with the white version on the dark blue car. In fact it was so attractive it got stolen a few weeks later...

One year later, still no payout from the shipping insurers.

Pete

I have heard rumours about the various fibreglass hardtops available. Has anybody tried the current CMC product?

PeterH

<a href="http://s1067.photobucket.com/user/MBF24 ... 3.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u43 ... MG3953.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo CIMG3953.jpg"/></a>

Purrfect!