When It Comes to This E-Type, Six Beats 12

Less is often more in the world of the Jaguar E-Type.

Early Series 1 cars with the 3.8-liter straight-six tend to fetch the highest prices, while there’s no greater XKE dream than a genuine Lightweight.

However, if on-road behavior rather than investment potential drives you, then the opposite has traditionally been true. More cylinders, more capacity, more refinement, and more power in the form of the V-12 is, more often than not, the way forward for E-Type enjoyment.

Or it was until now.

Six is now greater than 12 thanks to the efforts of Kent-based E-Type UK. As the name implies, the company has a long history with the classic Jag, focused on restoration and servicing, and, in more recent years offering customers updates and full restomods.

The firm’s Unleashed series, based on the Series III V-12, is E-Type UK’s idea of the ultimate XKE. Well, at least until a regular customer came back with an unusual request.

He had found a twin-spark cylinder head manufactured by E-Torque in Connecticut and had the perfect car to fit it in – a 1967 roadster with just 19,000 miles on the clock, sourced from California.

With plans to tour Europe, the car’s left-hand-drive configuration was already a good starting point, but what this E-Type enthusiast craved was more power than the original 265 horsepower of the 4.2-liter six, coupled with modern standards of reliability for lengthy road trips and rallies.

The result is a very personal specification, and one not without its challenges. Boring out the engine to 4.7 liters was relatively straightforward, but fitting fuel-injection with Jenvey Heritage–style throttle bodies and getting the ECU programming right to work with twin-spark ignition required plenty of tinkering. Coupled to the engine is a five-speed Tremec manual transmission, while its cooling is updated with an aluminum radiator, header tank, and high-flow fan. There’s a new oil cooler and a custom stainless-steel exhaust with six-branch manifolds that maintain their bore right to the twin tailpipes.

Adjustable front suspension, new rear damper and spring platforms, plus a high-spec anti-roll bar and torsion bars have been designed to improve roadholding, without sacrificing the ride quality. The front brakes have been upgraded to four-pot calipers with vented discs, but the rears remain standard. Also unchanged is the steering, with the owner eschewing power assistance but opting for a leather-trimmed Moto Lita wheel instead of a traditional wooden rim.

The Suede Green cabin gets lightweight bucket seats with inertia reel seatbelts and new Smiths instruments including a “telltale” rev counter. British Racing Green has been chosen for the exterior and matte-finish Dunlop-style wheels have been adapted to fit the splined hubs and be secured with triple-eared spinners. Chromework includes new front bumpers without the overriders, although they have been retained at the rear.

As we’ve said, this cat has been built to one man’s exact specification. E-Type UK reckons 4000 hours have gone into it and to build something similar would likely cost $380,000.

That doesn’t include testing, which is done according to the “Geneva Principle.” What that means is that every car E-Type UK builds goes through roadtesting of at least 590 miles—the equivalent distance between its location inside a Kent barn and the Swiss city. Why? Because driving to Geneva with Jaguar’s Norman Dewis at the wheel was exactly what the very first E-Type did. E-Type UK tends to spread the distance out over several days rather than the single night in which Dewis did it, however.

Thanks to a constant mizzle and roads either flooded or mud-caked, my drive is going to be significantly shorter. Restricted to the narrow tracks around the farm, this will be no in-depth review. In fact, after a few quick blats up and down I can sum the car up in one word: angry.

It starts with a bark and settles into a throaty idle. Prod the throttle and the response is immediate, with a real eagerness to rev. In the slippery conditions the torque easily overwhelms the relatively skinny rear rubber in first, second, and third gears. Far from being the easy-going grand tourer I expected, the powertrain feels like that of a race car.

There’s 435 horsepower and 390 lb-ft of torque on tap, which tops even E-Type UK’s Unleashed V-12s, while this car weighs considerably less. If you wanted to beat Dewis’s drive time to Geneva, then this would be the E-Type to do it.

Currently, it’s one-of-a-kind, but given the performance advantage and the investment in developing the engine, it surely won’t be the last.

• 1
• /
• 10