Jaguar E-Type (1961–1975)

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The car Enzo Ferrari reportedly called the most beautiful ever made — at half the price of his own.

When the E-Type broke cover at Geneva in 1961, it stopped the show. Enzo Ferrari is famously said to have called it the most beautiful car in the world, and even if the quote is apocryphal, the sentiment stuck. Its long, low form came not from a stylist but from an aerodynamicist, Malcolm Sayer, whose work on Jaguar's Le Mans racers gave the road car its shape.

Under that endless bonnet sat Jaguar's XK straight-six, a 3.8-litre unit enlarged to 4.2 litres in 1964, good for a claimed 150 mph. What made the E-Type revolutionary wasn't only how it looked or went, but what it cost: it undercut its exotic Italian rivals by so much that it made real performance suddenly attainable.

Produced from 1961 to 1974, the E-Type became the definitive image of the 1960s sports car — beautiful, fast, and, for once, almost affordable.

Written and fact-checked for every.autos · every claim checked against the sources below · 2026-07

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Background

The Jaguar E-Type, or the Jaguar XK-E for the North American market, is a British front-engined sports car that was manufactured by Jaguar Cars Ltd from 1961 to 1974. Its sleek appearance, advanced technologies, high performance, and competitive pricing established it as an icon. The E-Type's claimed 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) top speed, sub-7-second 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) acceleration, largely unitary body construction, front and rear independent suspension with disc brakes, mounted inboard at the rear, and rack-and-pinion steering spurred industry-wide changes.

Text adapted from “Jaguar E-Type” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗ · retrieved 2026-07

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