Jaguar E-Type Rivals

A car stands on this page only where a source of the E-Type's own time set it beside the E-Type, or where one price list of the same date printed both; one later car, Ferrari's Daytona, appears only as context. Prices are list prices when new: in Britain with purchase tax, from Motor Sport's reports; in America from Automotive News's list of 11 September 1961, whose prices were for cars landed at an East Coast port, with freight, excise tax and duty paid. The E-Type's own prices are in the specifications tables.⁠source 2​source 3

Automotive News's list of September 1961 put the XK-E beside the cars the British comparison had in mind, and on that list the Jaguar roadster cost about half the price of the Ferrari, Aston Martin and Maserati coupés:

The Ferrari of the list is the Pininfarina-bodied road coupé, not the 250 GT SWB that beat the E-Type on the track; Ferrari's road coupé of 1962 to 1964, the Berlinetta Lusso, was built 350 times, Ferrari says. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coupé was no longer built, and Mercedes-Benz gives 1,400 of them.

Some of the comparison was practical. On Motor Sport's trip to Monaco in 1962, Boddy noted that the DB4 GT carried more than twice as much fuel as the E-Type, and the Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta and the Maserati half as much again. Denis Jenkinson, a Porsche owner, was impressed by the Jaguar but found it "large, noisy and heavy as to steering and gear-change after a Porsche".

In America the obvious rival was home-grown. Car and Driver set the XK-E against the fuel-injected Corvette of the 1962 model year in December 1961, at the request of a reader who wrote that "the two cars are competitive in price, to a degree". The magazine found the Jaguar quicker to 40 mph and the Corvette quicker beyond, so that the Jaguar "would lose a showroom-stock drag race"; but the Jaguar's suspension "provides a smoother, more comfortable ride", and the testers drove it at 145 mph. The Corvette was more comfortable inside and kept the weather out better.

At the London motor show of October 1964, where the 4.2 appeared, Motor Sport gave these prices in Britain, with tax:

The Porsche, the magazine added, was priced at a figure "which should discourage all but the really wealthy". The Maserati Mistrale was at the same show, with no price given. Ferrari says it built about 450 of the 275 GTB.

The cheaper British alternative was the Austin-Healey 3000. At a day of testing at Goodwood, reported in December 1964, Motor Sport drove both: beside the E-Type the Healey "sounded twice as noisy, felt half as fast and cornered rather raggedly", though it cost little more than half as much as the E-Type. A much smaller car could keep up: a Lotus Elan stayed with Motor Sport's 4.2 test car on the M1, up to 135 mph, in January 1965.

The 2+2 of 1966 was built to carry children and to earn more dollars, Motor Sport reported. In America, Gunnell's Standard Catalog records, Car and Driver's readers had already voted the XK-E their best GT or sports car between $3,000 and $6,000, in May 1964.⁠source 3​source 10​source 11​source 12​source 13​source 8

When the V12 reached America in March 1971, AROnline's Chris Cowin records, the convertible cost $6,950, and British Leyland's other new open car, the Triumph Stag, at $5,773 with its hardtop, "wasn't much cheaper". Jenkinson, driving the V12 that spring, was clear about what it was not: "A Ford GT40 or the Mercedes-Benz C111 is another matter … The Series III Jaguar 'E'-type is not meant to be in that category."

Ferrari's 365 GTB/4 Daytona, its V12 grand tourer of 1968 to 1973, was built as 1,284 coupés and 122 spiders, by Ferrari's count; no source of the period read sets it beside the E-Type. The E-Type's successor showed how far the market had moved: the XJ-S cost $19,000 in America for its first model year, "double that of the out-going E-type V12", Cowin writes.⁠source 14​source 15​source 8

The first race an E-Type started, at Oulton Park on 15 April 1961, was against an Aston Martin DB4 GT, and Graham Hill won it, with Innes Ireland's Aston second. Looking back in 1975, Motor Sport remembered the impression it made on the public to see the new Jaguar beat cars costing two and three times as much; the ECD 400 page tells that race.

The Ferraris were harder to beat than that suggests. The 250 GT SWB won the big GT races of 1961, and from 1962 Ferrari's 250 GTO, of which Ferrari built 36, took over: at Le Mans in 1962 GTOs were second and third and E-Types fourth and fifth. According to Giotto Bizzarrini, as Motor Sport reported in 2007, the GTO itself was a response to the threat from Coventry. Jaguar answered with the Lightweight. At Sebring in March 1963, Briggs Cunningham's and Kjell Qvale's Lightweights finished eighth and seventh, and at Goodwood on Easter Monday, in April, Graham Hill's Lightweight beat Mike Parkes's GTO by 1.4 seconds.

The last E-Type rival on the track was American. Group 44's V12 lost the national B Production title of the Sports Car Club of America to a Corvette by 0.8 seconds in 1974, and Bob Tullius won it in 1975. The races are told on the racing pages, from 1961 to Group 44.⁠source 16​source 17​source 18​source 19​source 20​source 21​source 22​source 23​source 8