1967 Jaguar E-type Roadster

It’s hard to imagine a car today having the kind of cultural impact that the Jaguar E-type had in the early 1960s. The XK-E ushered in a decade when the whole world looked to Swinging England for its sense of style – James Bond, the Beatles, and miniskirts on Carnaby Street. And a car built in Coventry made everything else on the road, including Ferraris and Maseratis, look so last decade.

Malcolm Sayer, an aerodynamics specialist who worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company during World War II, largely designed Jaguar’s C-type, D-type, and E-type. When creating a design, he would consult complex tables of formulas and outline mysterious elliptical shapes. To test the results, he attached four-inch pieces of yarn to a test model and photographed it on a test track.

It’s hard to imagine a car today having the kind of cultural impact that the Jaguar E-type had in the early 1960s. The XK-E ushered in a decade when the whole world looked to Swinging England for its sense of style – James Bond, the Beatles, and miniskirts on Carnaby Street. And a car built in Coventry made everything else on the road, including Ferraris and Maseratis, look so last decade.

Malcolm Sayer, an aerodynamics specialist who worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company during World War II, largely designed Jaguar’s C-type, D-type, and E-type. When creating a design, he would consult complex tables of formulas and outline mysterious elliptical shapes. To test the results, he attached four-inch pieces of yarn to a test model and photographed it on a test track.

On loan to the museum from Bernhard Arnold