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An E-Type in the garden: rotting '63 Jaguar heads for auction

There's something about formerly gorgeous cars in dilapidated states from which the eye cannot turn away. The devastatingly cruel fate of this Jaguar E-Type is an illustration. Next week, it likely begins a new life. Still voluptuous after decades rotting in a garden, this 1963 Series 1 fixed head coupe will be offered for sale at the Coys auction Tuesday in London. The car has 44,870 miles on the odometer and has passed through several owners, including one with a tangential connection to the Beatles and another man who used the Jag to pull his MG to Brands Hatch. He would race them both, according to Coys' listing, wringing the most out of the E-Type's 265-horsepower inline six. Ivor Arbiter was owner No. 1. His link to history is that he designed the Beatles drop-T logo in the early '60s and was reportedly paid five British pounds for it. He bought the E-Type new in 1963, used it, and then sold it to in 1965. The E-Type passed through a couple of owners until motorsports enthusiast Frank Riches bought it in '67. He tracked the Jag at some of Britain's iconic circuits and drove it until he fried the clutch. Coys cites a story from Riches' brother recounting when the E-Type hit 150 miles per hour on a public road, its listed top speed. It was in storage until the 1980s, and then Riches relocated it to his garden, where it has sat for years. Considering its long dormancy, the Jag appears to be in reasonable shape. It's never been restored, obviously, and Riches still has many of the original parts he replaced, including the center console and radiator bar. Coys notes that the seats have a "lovely patina" and are worth saving, too. The buyer also gets a brown logbook, the sales invoice to Riches, two service books (it is a '63 Jag) and a spare parts catalogue. A Coys auctioneer told ITV.com that the car could net about $140,000. Related Video: Jaguar Auctions Coupe Luxury Performance jaguar e-type

2014 Jaguar XKR-S GT takes fiercest feline further [UPDATE]

If there were any car to overshadow the 542-horsepower Jaguar XJR that's coming to the New York Auto Show, this is it. Meet the Jaguar XKR-S GT - a street-legal, higher-performance version of the already hardcore XKR-S that will be headed to North America in very limited quantities. Only 30 will be offered on our continent, with 25 earmarked for the United States and the remaining five going to Canada. The cost of entry? $174,000 when it goes on sale this August.
What that gets you is a coupe that is, without any doubt, ready to attack any racetrack it might encounter. The XKR-S' supercharged 5.0-liter V8 has not been upgraded in terms of power - not that 550 horsepower and 502 pound-feet of torque is anything to sneeze at - but instead, Jaguar focused on tuning the bits of the car that help effectively put all that grunt to the ground. There's a new hood with rows of louvers to aid in engine cooling, and elsewhere on the car's body, you'll find carbon fiber on the redesigned front air splitter, dive planes, extended wheel arch spats, as well as a new rear diffuser, an aluminum front under tray and an absolutely massive wing out back to keep downforce to a maximum.
Underneath that hot body are retuned and height-adjustable adaptive dampers; spring rates have been increased by 68 percent in front and 25 percent at the rear versus a standard XKR-S. Most of the front and rear suspension geometry has been upgraded, larger carbon ceramic brakes have been fitted at all four corners, and wider 20-inch forged alloy wheels are found here, wrapped in Pirelli Corsa tires - 255/35-series rubber in front and 305/30-series stuff out back. There's also a revised active exhaust system, which should only improve the already thunderous roar coming out the back of the Jag coupe, and a faster steering rack has been added for improved agility.

Jaguar working on windows that open when you touch them

Jaguar is working on side windows that will whir up and down not with a push of a button, but with a touch of the glass itself. According to Jaguar Design Director Ian Callum, "For instance, if you want to pull the windows down, you touch a certain area of the glass and you can actually just drop them down." Callum would go on to caution, "These things are all a work in progress at the moment," before pausing and saying, "That's coming." When we asked when we might see such technology deployed in a production car, Callum, who spoke with Autoblog at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday, said, "I don't know when, but we certainly know how to do it." Callum was less forthcoming about how the technology functions, saying, "Oh, I can't tell you (laughs)... it's proximity, mainly." It's not clear whether traditional physical switches mounted on the doors would still be required with such a system. The designer then went on to discuss Jaguar's innovation in proximity-based switchgear – the automaker has already been using the technology for its interior overhead lighting controls and glovebox release. When we asked about any safety concerns that touch-control windows might generate, Callum said, "I think if it's a very specific area, there's absolutely no ambiguity about what you're trying to do – it's fine." Callum knows a thing or two about the need for absolute specificity in this area – when Jaguar introduced its XF sedan with proximity switchgear, it found passengers were accidentally opening their gloveboxes with their knees, which prompted a quick redesign. "It's a whole new genre of disciplines that we have to think about – what is safe," he said. Design/Style Jaguar Technology Luxury 2015 Detroit Auto Show