Science and technology
Babbage
Automotive innovation
The Difference Engine: Birth of an icon
Dec 10th 2010, 9:30 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES
PETROL-HEADS of a certain age may have noticed that the 50th anniversary of the Jaguar E-Type sportscar is imminent. Within the motoring world, it will be the cause for much ballyhoo and dewy-eyed nostalgia. But before getting caught up in all the hoopla, your correspondent—wizened enough to have been around when the iconic car made its debut at the Geneva motor show in 1961—would like to contribute his two-pennyworth of personal experience on why the E-Type really was the most innovative piece of automotive machinery of its age.
The most extraordinary thing about the E-Type was not just that its wind-cheating aerodynamic shape—at least in fixed-head coupé form—endowed it with one of the lowest drag coefficients for a mass-produced car ever. Nor was it simply the fact that the novel independent suspension at the rear, as well as at the front, allowed it to skate round corners like nothing before, while disc-brakes on all four wheels could bring it so abruptly to a stop. Nor even was it the powerful twin-cam engine, with its racing heritage, that could propel the car to 150 miles per hour in an age when the fastest most cars could manage was little more than half as much.
All those features, and more, would have been enough to make the E-Type a classic. But what turned it into an icon that has endured for 50 years was the simple, yet remarkable, fact that it cost only half as much as anything comparable. In short, it put extraordinary motoring within the grasp of ordinary people.
As legend has it, Jaguar founder William Lyons (later knighted) and three key engineers, William Heynes, Walter Hassan and Claude Baily, used to discuss future engine designs while performing their nightly fire-watching duties from their factory rooftop during the latter years of the Second World War. When dawn came, they would trot downstairs to build prototypes that incorporated every conceivable innovation in engine design known at the time.
The final result of all the talking and tinkering was a freely breathing, lightly stressed six-cylinder engine of 3.4 litres displacement, with a rigid cast-iron block and an aluminium cylinder head (better for dissipating heat) that incorporated opposed valves in hemispherical combustion chambers, driven by twin overhead camshafts. When the so-called XJ6 engine went into production in 1947, for the forthcoming XK120 sportscar, it was so ahead of its time that it would go on to power practically every Jaguar made for the next 40 years—not to mention the company’s legendary C-Type and D-Type racing cars that overwhelmed the annual Le Mans 24-hour endurance race during the 1950s.
From the start, the layout of the XJ6 engine was so inherently correct that the only way it could be improved was to increase the cylinder diameter. Even then, enough room had been engineered into the block to allow for this to happen. To provide still more power, the engine would eventually be bored out first to 3.8 litres and subsequently to 4.2 litres. Even 20 years after its introduction, Mercedes, BMW and other makers of straight-six engines struggled to match the XJ6’s torque, refinement and reliability.
Thus, when the E-Type was being planned, Jaguar did not have to develop a powerful new engine. Nor did it have to invest in tooling to make it. The same could be said for the modern disc-brakes that are taken for granted nowadays. These were introduced to the world on the C-Type in 1952 for the Mille Miglia race in Italy, where sceptical officials, never having seen such things, demanded a demonstration before allowing the car to compete. By 1958, Jaguar had fitted fade-free disc-brakes as standard to the XK150 sportscar, the E-Type’s predecessor.
The money saved from not having to develop a powerful new engine nor an advanced braking system was devoted instead to other innovations—most notably, the E-Type’s aerodynamics, unitary body construction and, above all, its revolutionary independent rear suspension. Even then, much of the engineering had been tried and tested on the D-Type racer. This way the E-Type’s development costs were kept to a minimum, making the final price of the car (around £2,100 after tax) half that of a comparable Aston Martin.
No account of the E-Type would be complete without mention of Malcolm Sayer, one of the first engineers in the world to systematically apply aerodynamic principles to car design. A firm believer in the use of wind tunnels and smoke testing, his first creation at Jaguar was the streamlined C-Type followed by the even more radical D-Type. The latter’s light but stiff monocoque body carried the various loads through its outer structure like an aircraft fuselage, rather than via a heavy frame-like chassis, as the C-Type and other cars had largely done till then.
For the road-going E-Type, Sayer took a lengthened version of the monocoque concept with a subframe to brace the front torsion-bar suspension, but added an entirely new type of rear suspension. Given its power-to-weight ratio, a solid rear axle would have made the E-Type more than a handful for the average motorist, as the back end hopped and skipped under hard acceleration. The only answer was to make the motions of the rear wheels independent of one another.
In Sayer’s design, each wheel had its own a pair of springs, one on either side of the drive shaft, with the disc brakes placed well inboard—so they would not add to the unsprung weight of the rear wheels and thereby hamper the action of the springs and shock absorbers. The assembly was carried on a pair of steel cross-members, which were bolted to the monocoque underbody by means of four large rubberised mounting pads. The arrangement not only improved the ride and handling of the car, but also isolated the interior from most of the noise and vibration generated by the wheels, suspension and the differential.
When Enzo Ferrari clapped eyes on the E-Type for the first time, he declared it “the most beautiful car ever built”—and went on to copy aspects of it for various Ferrari models that followed. But it wasn’t just Sayer’s flowing lines that captivated the Italian master carmaker. The E-Type’s innovative rear suspension subsequently found its way, in one form or another, into luxury and performance cars the world over.
With the E-Type, Sayer created not just a motoring icon, but a whole design language that shaped the thinking of generations of car designers thereafter. If you look carefully, you can see how the long bonnet, feline curves and haunches over the rear wheels that defined the E-Type’s stance on the road have become features of practically every Jaguar since. Even today, when so much of a car’s external shape is governed by strict regulations that determine the height and position of every fitting, the DNA inherited from Sayer’s E-Type continues to infuse even the latest Jaguars developed under Ian Callum.
Over the years, your correspondent has driven a number of E-Types. His favourite, by far, remains the later 4.2-litre version of the Series 1 model in coupé form. By today’s standards, the E-Type is not particularly fast nor forgiving. But all versions have such stunning looks and purity of character as to mark them as truly great machines. Your correspondent never owned one. He wished he had.
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Great article. But 150 mph? A-hem.
Good stuff - and there was Issigonis and the Mini.
So where are the British innovations today? There seems plenty of room in robotic driving, hybrid and electric and much else. Surely this is a good time to be an innovative motor engineer? Why do I worry that we are still trying to make e-types?
My father used to say that when he was young he could have bought an E-Type Jaguar or married my mother but that he was never sure he'd made the right choice. He was joking. I think.
I will always remember two E-types. The first was in Oxford 1966, driven smartly by ... a little white-haired old lady. The second was in Cary Valley Road, Kent, rejoicing in the licence plate PEN 15.
"the E-Type really was the most innovative piece of automotive machinery of its age".
I never owned an E-type but did own a Citroen DS 19 which I believed was the most innovative piece of automotive machinery of its age.
Great article and would encourage Babbage to write similar one about the Citroen!
I knew a person who collected very large numbers of very expensive cars. He kept them in a former bowling alley. It is shocking how basic they were: bent metal, simple wiring and controls, an engine you could take apart, clean by hand and put back together.
Selling the superb E type too cheaply was principle reason that this stunning car was never properly developed and refined, in the way that the 911, for example, was honed into something worth having, even though pig ugly.
I had a V12 for a while. A work of art. Why oh why didn't Jaguar keep the basic shape but bring it up to date?
The most extraordinary thing about it? The great auto journalist Henry Manney III said it best when he described the E-Type as "the greatest crumpet collector known to man".
How quickly we forget. A wonderful car, but it had a literal dark side. The electrical system was biodegradable. Joe Lucas got his title "Prince of Darkness" largely from E Type owners.
I love this article and remember as a child drooling over the car as wells as playing endlessly with its Matchbox miniature. But, like the many things that have changed the brand is no longer British, being build by Ratan Tata, the new Indian owner. Maybe Porsche will find its way to China. Nonetheless a wonderful article bringing a nostalgic chill to anyone remembering the car in its heyday.
My first close encounter with an E-type was when hitch-hiking from Newcastle to London in the early '60s. I was picked up by a young and enthusiastic American, the acceleration when he took off felt like a punch in the stomach. Magic, a beautiful car, just as many earlier Jaguar saloons remained beautiful even as styles changed.
The form was beautiful but the construction was faulty. One had to stop nearly as frequently to add oil as to fill the gas tank. Shifting was rough compared with the fluid synchromesh of much earlier VW Bugs. Design ideas were wonderful and pricing was affordable; however, execution and poor quality led to its fall.
At the 1972 Geneva auto show my father and I were walking around as he was looking for a new sporty car. I was six years old. My eyes fell on the V12 E-Type on display in its magnificent silver-grey and chrome attire. I tugged on his coat and said I wanted this car, this car, this car! He agreed it was a nice one and we took a test drive. Wonderful. But, he wanted to be sure and we tried the Maserati offering of the time and the Lamborghini. I comprehensively poopooed both even though I had no real basis. I just didn't "like" them. The E-type was it for me.
My father kindly obliged. A few months later we watched on the tarmac at Geneva airport (back when you could do those things) as the E-Type, flown-in straight from Coventry, gently pulled out and down from the rear cargo bay of the plane. It was pure magic for an already magical car.
Everywhere we went in the Geneva area, anywhere we parked the car, it attracted attention and a small crowd. The few times he took me to school with it, all the boys came out and surrounded the car in adulatory glee.
My father drove it for a few years 'til he met his new wife. It had only 38,000km on the clock. Then he left it in an underground car park in Paris for the next 25 years or so. He tried to sell it once, to no avail.
By the late 90s I was in my 30s and we'd moved to London. I enquired about the E-type and my father said if I could take care of it then I could have it.
I arranged to have it shipped to the UK and sent it to an expert mechanic in Coventry (all ex-Jag) and he carefully resuscitated the car.
I've been driving it ever since, almost every day (no garage queen this one). My love for it goes undiminished, as do the attentions of passersby, even those far too young to remember the car.
The first thing people ask is how long I've had it, and I reply, "why, since 1972!" This gets a great big, broad smile. There's something the British find particularly delightful in hearing someone's kept a car so long. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I enjoy it every time I see it. It's as if they understand my particular brand of lunacy and fanaticism.
Happy 50th, E-type! There will never be another!
This may not be the place for my comment but I have been thinking about this for sometime. I bought a used '96 XJ in 1999. A co-worker described the color as candy-apple red. It was a real head turner. It was heavy, turned on a dime, and was fun to drive. It was very recognizable. When you saw a Jag XJ you knew it was a Jag. When I see its replacement model I have to look very closely at it before I can say that it is indeed a Jaguar. The current model resembles many other autos we see on the road. It no longer has the distinctive of a Jaguar.
Babbage, you're not the only to have longingly coveted owning a 'Cat'! Those early years were the Cats glory days. But by the mid/late-eighties the Jag was losing it's gleam & allure among the more enlightened & selective connoseurs of classy cars.
Hopefully with India's Tata taking over the iconic model, the Cat will spring forward to pole position, once again. My own love affair with the Jag has not fissled out completely. I guess I still long for the good old days when the Cat ruled supreme!
The E-type Jaguar is possibly the best car ever built (besides the Ferrari 250GTO among others)! 150mph in the 1960s is extremely fast. To put it in perspective, the new Bugatti Supersports (the fastest production car) does slightly above 210mph. And that's after 50 years of engineering.
@reventonrage
2011 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport entered the Guinness Book of Records with an average top speed of 431 km/h (267 mph)that's more than 110 mph difference.
I owned a 1967 XKE Convertible Series II with the 4.2 liter engine.
Purchased in Bethesda, Maryland in 1969, I drove it to California in a matter of 4 days, without any trouble, other than snow on the roads.
The Car was beautiful, always started and ran like a top. Occasionally, in traffic, it did not like the heat, so I often had to take a bunch of side streets to keep everything running without overheating. It was a great vehicle for a then 21 year old, single male, cruising Sunset Blvd., Malibu, and my school - UCLA.
Thank you for the story. It serves as a great reminder that if you want something special, as this car is, get out there and buy one any way you can. The pleasure and pride of ownership in such a car is aspiring. And, I originally paid less than $5,000 for the car and enjoyed it for more than 5 years.
Bill Myers, Owner
VDOAKTV.NET
The Bugatti Veyron is the new luv-of-me-life! Wish I had a mill or 2 to spare!! Sigh..
I bought a 1970 4.2 drophead in 1981 restored and used it daily for four or five years. It was the most beautiful fun and stylish car I have ever had. It is probably sacrilege but if I could afford one today I think I would go for one of the modern versions which are an E-Type on the outside but have modern engine, brakes, electrics etc.
And 150MPH. Never, not even close. 135MPH definitely, 140MPH probably but that really was the limit. If a manufacturer made such a claim today they would be prosecuted.