Jaguar E-Type at Le Mans

E2A was Jaguar's racing prototype of 1960, a fuel-injected car built from the start of the year, with a D-type-like body and a longer nose. Unpainted, it was 3rd at the Le Mans test day on 9 April with Walt Hansgen and Ed Crawford. Jaguar then lent it to Cunningham, the American entrant, who painted it in his white with blue stripes.

In the race, on 25–26 June, Dan Gurney and Hansgen drove it as No. 6, in the S3.0 sports-car class. It retired after 89 laps, at 1.35 in the morning, with engine failure that began with a fuel-injection fault. The only other Jaguar in the race, Ecurie Ecosse's D-type, also retired, and Ferrari won with a 250 Testa Rossa. Gurney's verdict on the car, and its American races that autumn, are on the E2A page.⁠source 6​source 7​source 1​source 8

Three E-Types started in 1962, all private entries. Cunningham shared a fixed-head coupé with Roy Salvadori as No. 10. Peter Sargent entered No. 9, a roadster, for Sargent and Lumsden, and Maurice Charles entered No. 8 for Charles and Coundley.

As faster cars dropped out, the two leading E-Types moved up. Near the end Sargent and Lumsden's car developed gearbox (transmission) trouble, and Motor Sport reported that it "dropped back to fifth behind the similar car of Cunningham and Salvadori". Both covered 310 laps. They finished 4th and 5th overall and 1st and 2nd in the GT class for cars up to 4 litres, behind Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien's Ferrari prototype and two Ferrari 250 GTOs. Charles and Coundley's car retired with engine failure after 53 laps.

For 1963 Cunningham entered three new Lightweights, which Motor Sport described as "three new lightweight Jaguar E-types, with hard-tops": Cunningham and Grossman in No. 15, Salvadori and Richards in No. 16, and Pabst and Hansgen in No. 14.

Hansgen and Pabst's car went out in the second hour with a broken gearbox, after 8 laps. In the fifth hour Salvadori crashed on oil in No. 16, in an accident in which a driver of another car died. Cunningham and Grossman's car ran on and was 7th in the 15th hour, before its brakes failed.

It finished 9th, after 283 laps, and 2nd in the class for the largest GT cars, GT+3.0, behind the AC Cobra of Sanderson and Bolton. 1963 was Cunningham's last Le Mans as a driver. One thing is easily confused: Sargent and Lumsden's entry that year, No. 17, was a Lister-Jaguar coupé, not an E-Type.⁠source 3​source 5

Two private Lightweights came in 1964, both with low-drag roofs and tails. Peter Lindner's, registered 4868 WK, had been rebodied by the factory, the only Lightweight it rebodied this way, Motor Sport wrote in 2011; Lumsden and Sargent's 49 FXN had a low-drag coupé body too. At the test day on 19 April they were 6th and 7th, the fastest of the GT cars up to 4 litres.

In the race Lindner and Peter Nöcker drove No. 16 and retired with a failed head gasket after 149 laps; Lumsden and Sargent's No. 17 retired with gearbox failure after 80 laps. What happened to Lindner's car later that year is on its own page. No later E-Type entry at Le Mans appears in racingsportscars' list: 1964 was the last of the E-Type's Le Mans races in period. It came back to the circuit in historic racing, on the historic racing page.⁠source 11​source 4​source 12​source 13​source 14

Ferrari won all four races. In 1960 a 250 Testa Rossa won; in 1962 the 330 TRI/LM won and 250 GTOs were 2nd and 3rd, ahead of both E-Types; in 1963 Ferraris filled the first six places, and the AC Cobra was 7th, ahead of the Lightweight; and in 1964 Ferrari prototypes were 1st to 3rd, with Shelby's Cobra Daytona Coupé 4th and the best GT car, and two 250 GTO 64s 5th and 6th.

Speed on the Mulsanne Straight was the difference. Jenkinson reckoned the larger Ferrari coupés of 1963 had 385 b.h.p. and Ferrari's works cars about 350.

Of the nine cars that started there in period, the two that finished highest, in 1962, were built before the Lightweights existed.⁠source 1​source 2​source 3​source 4​source 5