Call it what you will—E-Type, as in Britain, or XK-E, as here in the States—Jaguar’s most iconic car can now also be called the best British car ever, thanks to a recent magazine poll.
The E-Type, as our own internal style guide demands we call it, debuted in March 1961 at the Geneva Motor Show to the sorts of reviews reserved for world-class cars: “The most wanted car in the world,” the Daily Mail wrote. “It will be a winner everywhere.” Indeed, after some testing of a highly optimized coupe version on a Belgian highway that resulted in a top speed of 150.4 MPH, Jaguar boasted of having built the world’s fastest production car.
Over their 13-year production run, the 70,000 E-Types that Jaguar built would essentially set the standard for sports cars and for Jaguar itself. The droptop and fixed-head coupe bodystyles would make room for a 2+2 coupe, two major revisions would follow, and the overhead-camshaft straight-six would give way to an overhead-camshaft V-12, but the E-Type would remain desirable even after production ended in 1974. It continued to win races and championships into the late 1970s, it’s topped countless lists of the most beautiful or significant cars of all time, it’s earned accolades from Jeremy Clarkson and Enzo Ferrari, and it has even appeared as the most British car that ever Britished with Austin Powers at the wheel and the Union Jack slathered all over it.
Little surprise, then, that British car publication Classic and Sports Car Magazine bestowed the title of best British car ever, unveiling the selection at the magazine’s debut car show in London late last month. Other cars in the running for the magazine’s competition included the Austin Seven, the Bentley Speed Six, the Ford GT40, the Jaguar XKSS, the Lotus Seven, the McLaren F1, the Mini Cooper S, the Range Rover, and the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost.
Much to various Hemmings editors’ chagrin, the poll did not include any Rover automobiles, Triumph TRs, the Morgan Three-Wheeler, or the Vauxhall Chevette.
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