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Jaguar E-Type 60 Collection celebrates 1961 launch and The Decade of the Cat

The night before the 1961 Geneva Motor Show, Jaguar PR man Bob Berry drove "flat out" from the English automaker's home base in Coventry to the city on the lake. Berry needed to be at the Parc des Eaux Vives in time to debut the car he was driving, a Jaguar E-Type coupe in Opalescent Gunmetal Grey with the number plate 9600 HP. Legend says he arrived at the Parc only minutes ahead of the appointed time for test drives. That morning hinted, and the decade of the 1960s would prove, that Berry also arrived driving a legend. The invited guests did so much clucking over the hardtop that Jaguar boss Sir William Lyons told famed company engineer Norman Dewis to "drop everything" and dispatch another cat to Geneva that very night. Dewis drove the roughly 700 miles in 11 hours to get a British Racing Green E-Type roadster with the number plate 77 RW to the show the following morning. To celebrate those two totems to Englishness and success, Jaguar Classic will build the E-Type 60 Collection — 12 cars sold only as six sets of two, with one coupe and one roadster in each set. All cars will be powered by rebuilt 3.8-liter straight-sixes with 265 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. That motor took the show cars from zero to 60 miles per hour in 6.9 seconds, on to a top speed of 150 mph. The coupes will be painted Flat Out Grey, the roadsters in Drop Everything Green, unique colors reserved for the collection. The dozen cars will also get special design details penned by Jaguar design director Julian Thompson. Jaguar Classic already has the 12 E-Type Series 1 donor cars in its possession, and plans to begin restorations in March 2021. Jaguar hasn't mentioned pricing, and likely won't unless you intend to purchase. Seeing as a Jaguar Classic E-Type Reborn was priced at $355,000 three years ago, multiply that by two and add a touch for inflation and exclusivity for an approximate base price. If you're still interested, the E-Type 60 Collection is available to order now, so contact Jaguar Classic. 

E.C.D. Automotive Design gets into the Jaguar restomod game

Florida-based E.C.D. Automotive Design — formerly East Coast Defender — made its bones turning the barely disguised Midlands tractors emerging from Land Rover's Solihull plant into finely detailed Chelsea tractors that cost almost as much as a genuine John Deere (which means a lot, for those unaware of the frightening costs of farm equipment). With its territory well marked and established, ECD decided to expand its offerings to "something that would sit nicely next to one of our existing Land Rover builds and be on a par, but something different, something sporty and quintessentially British." The search began and ended with the Jaguar E-Type. Not only do we know the formula for this, but Jaguar Classic Works just advertised its own adroitness with such builds in showing off the 1968 Series 1 E-Type Roadster that took part in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Pageant. ECD offers a few options Jaguar Classic Works doesn't, though, starting with the same kinds of engine conversions performed on the Land Rovers. The outfitter will be happy to rebuild or source an age appropriate inline-six or V12 and a five-speed manual transmission, warning that the mill "will require higher ongoing maintenance" and "come with leaks and all." Less grubby options are either a GM LT1 6.2-liter V8 with 450 horsepower, shifting through an eight-speed automatic, or an electric conversion using a 450-horsepower Tesla powertrain that provides a range of 200 miles in the city and 140 miles on the highway. All variants get performance suspension and brakes; the ICE versions get a sports exhaust, too. The standard menu of paint and interior options includes 11 historic Jaguar paint colors from the 1960s through the 1980s, and 10 modern colors from the 2023 lineup. Inside, 12 solid hues of Nappa leather can be upgraded with two-tone, hand-tipped, spinneybeck, woven, or distressed treatments to go with the European weave carpeting. Prices start at $299,995, each build taking about 14 months to deliver.  Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Tata to get Jaguar and Land Rover tech, platforms too?

Since buying Jaguar Land Rover, Indian automaker Tata has generally left its luxury arm's platforms and technology alone. However, those days might be gone. The two of them are gradually growing closer with coordinated development and rumors of shared platforms. And it looks like all of that work and money is finally going to pay off with an actual vehicle in the near future.
According to Australian website Drive, Tata wants to make its cars more attractive to buyers outside of India, and to do that the company knows it must improve quality. The Indian company is being careful, though, because it doesn't want to dilute the Jaguar or Land Rover brands with cheap models. "You're going to see in the future a lot of sharing of technologies and platforms over time, but you won't see a JLR with a Tata badge on it," said Darren Bowler, managing director of Tata's Australian distributor, to Drive.
According to Bowler, these future vehicles are already on the way. Tata and JLR have a global platform in the works for 2017 that both companies could use for cars or crossovers. He also hinted that Jaguar's new Ingenium engines could be shared among the brands in the future, too.