Fiskens has sold the Jaguar E2A, the unique 1960 works prototype that links the D-type to the E-type, for an undisclosed sum.
The one-off racer, which Octane featured in depth back in 2010 in issue 85, has changed hands for only the third time since leaving Jaguar – passing to a new custodian via the London dealer.
E2A’s significance lies in what it carried forward and what it previewed. Its riveted-alloy monocoque was an evolution of the Le Mans-winning D-type, while its front subframe arrangement and pioneering independent rear suspension would reappear beneath the E-type the following year – making this the production car’s sole surviving competition ancestor.
Though possibly conceived purely as a test vehicle, the prototype was loaned to American entrant Briggs Cunningham for the 1960 Le Mans 24 Hours. Walt Hansgen and Dan Gurney shared the driving, and the car – wearing the white and blue Cunningham colours it still carries – climbed to third place within two laps. Head gasket failure ended its run after seven-and-a-half hours.
E2A lived up to its racing potential in the US. Campaigned by Cunningham’s team in SCCA competition for the rest of 1960, E2A took victory first time out at Bridgehampton with Hansgen driving, followed by a podium at the Road America 500. Jack Brabham, fresh from clinching his Formula 1 World Championship, drove it at Riverside’s Los Angeles Times Grand Prix in October; his Cooper teammate Bruce McLaren then took the wheel for the first-ever Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna Seca.
Its racing days over, the prototype served Jaguar’s engineers – notably as a development mule for Dunlop’s Maxaret anti-lock brakes – before being scheduled for the scrap heap. Roger Woodley, manager of Jaguar’s customer competition workshop, intervened, and in 1968 E2A joined the Chipping Campden collection of his future father-in-law, photographer and Brooklands veteran Guy Griffiths. The proviso: it could never race again. Four decades of careful preservation followed.
When the car finally came to market at Bonhams’ 2008 Quail Lodge auction in Monterey, the $4,957,000 result set a world record for any Jaguar. Its new owner, no longer bound by the old agreement, had E2A sympathetically race-prepared by CKL Developments and returned it to La Sarthe for the 2010 Le Mans Classic, half a century on from its debut there. Goodwood appearances have followed regularly – including a 2011 Festival of Speed run with the late Norman Dewis, the Jaguar test driver who developed the car in period, then aged 91.
The new owner acquires a one-off raced by Gurney, Hansgen, Brabham and McLaren – and the only surviving ancestor of the E-type.
