The prospect of spending ten days driving through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany on the Jaguar E-type Club's first-ever tour was enticing enough - and then arch-Jaguar enthusiast Philip Porter made it unmissable by entrusting us with the very first right-hand-drive coupe. This historic car spent many years as part of what Porter calls "the world's biggest collection of rust" before being restored to showroom perfection by Classic Motor Cars in the English town of Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Much that was fashionable in 1961 looks downright comical today, but the E-type's ability to turn heads is as great as ever. I can't imagine Sir William Lyons, Jaguar's patrician founder, ever using such words as phallic or sexy, but the E-type really is Viagra on wheels. The coupe also provides a reasonableampunt of space for luggage, despite sports cars in general being as practical as a concrete parachute. Hindsight tells us that Jaguar's 150-mph top-speed claim had to be taken with a sachet of sodium chloride, but the E-type is still more than capable of keeping pace with modern traffic. Driving one for the first time in decades, I loved the view down the long hood, which conceals a 3.8-liter version of Jaguar's long-serving XK engine! As we headed for the Dover-Calais ferry, masses of six-cylinder torque reduced the need to wrestle with the four-speed Moss gearbqx, which was even slower and less precise than its counterpart in my '54 XK120.
展开▼
