The one-of-a-kind Jaguar E2A race car – widely known as the ‘missing link’ between the D-type and E-type – has been sold by London-based specialist car dealer Fiskens for an undisclosed figure.
Built in 1960 as a competition prototype, E2A combined the D-type’s monocoque chassis with the independent rear suspension and front subframe layout that would underpin the marque’s legendary E-type sports car a year later.
Although E2A was perhaps only initially intended for testing purposes, Briggs Cunningham entered it into the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1960, where it was driven by Walt Hansgen and Dan Gurney. The car wore the same white and blue Cunningham livery it retains to this day. E2A ran as high as third by lap two before a head-gasket failure ended its race after seven and a half hours.
Retirement in France heralded the beginning of a remarkable season. Shipped to the US for the remainder of 1960, E2A won its SCCA debut at Bridgehampton with Hansgen at the wheel, then took third at the Road America 500. At the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at Riverside in October it was driven by newly crowned Formula 1 World Champion Jack Brabham, before Brabham’s Cooper team-mate Bruce McLaren raced it at the inaugural Laguna Seca Pacific Grand Prix.
After the 1960 season, E2A was put to development duties, including a stint as a test bed for Dunlop’s Maxaret anti-lock braking system. The car was then destined to be destroyed – the fate of most prototypes – until Roger Woodley, manager of Jaguar‘s customer competition workshop, intervened. In 1968 E2A passed to the Chipping Campden collection of Brooklands veteran and photographer Guy Griffiths – Woodley’s future father-in-law – on the condition it was never raced. There it remained, preserved and unrestored, for 40 years.
E2A re-emerged in 2008, when it crossed the block at Bonhams’ Quail Lodge auction in Monterey for $4,957,000 – then a world-record price for a Jaguar. Under new ownership, E2A was at last free to return to competition, and was sympathetically race-prepared by UK-based marque specialist CKL Developments.
The prototype returned to La Sarthe for the 2010 Le Mans Classic – 50 years after making its competitive debut there – and has raced regularly at Goodwood since. At the 2011 Festival of Speed it was driven by the late Norman Dewis, the Jaguar test driver who had developed the car in period, by then aged 91.
E2A’s sale via Fiskens marks only its third private ownership since leaving the works and, as the sole surviving progenitor of the seminal E-type with a racing history that includes Gurney, Brabham and McLaren, it remains one of the most significant Jaguars in existence.
