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Jaguar E Type - "Pure Whiskey" or "The Flounder"

Under the section “car care”, you will find in the operating instruction that carpets can be brushed, but also cleaned with a vacuum cleaner. In the prospectus, it is simply written: “An ideal vehicle for sport and travel.” This is a sentence as out-dated as having oil in the engine bay of an abandoned pre-war vehicle.
 
 



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If you go through the operating instruction, you will find the instruction of “lubricating with the pot.” In this section, ten parts are listed, which should be lubricated with the pot every 8,000 km. 

This is cute, right? And if you keep on reading, you will find that the car at a speed level of 80 km/h only reaches 2,000/min. Keeping that in mind, the fast sports cap should rather stay at home. Let us now have a look at the required tyre pressure since it would be absurd to check it when you already arrived at the petrol station: “tyre pressure: in terms of normal cruising speed up to 210 km/h, at the front 1.6 and at the back 1.75 atm.” This is not a printing error. 

I close the prospectus and I decide to use the “normal cruising speed up to 210.” What should be necessary for the tyres – if you want to drive fast for once – I do not actually want to know. I am married, I have one child and all kinds of plans for the future … . 

Fist of all, I walk around the car. This takes its time since it is a long way. The car is 175.38 inches long. The engine requires half of the length. It is an engine with two jump seats. 

The car is open since it is in front of my door. It is already the end of October, but I am singing enthusiastically my favourite melody: “ram-ta-ta-tam.” The car is silver-grey with red leather padding and spoke wheels. A hot girl could sit on the railings two feet next to me wearing a bikini and I would pay no attention at all. 

The steering wheel is made of wood and the wide spokes are repeatedly pierced. It looks just if somebody had punched out pennies. You do not sit behind such wheels very often in your life. It feels as if you are enjoying a morning in May at Lake Maggiore. 

At the back of the car, there is a flap. If you open it, even less happens compared to opening a biscuit tin. Your suitcase will only fit, if you spin it through a steam press before. But Castrol cans would fit, enough of them to use the car for a travel. And you are here. This is comforting. 

This model is a so-called “scrubbed flounder.” This happens if you pass on your Jaguar for 30,000 km to Dick and Harry. Dick and Harry were in here, ten handy litre cans and 5-liter canisters as well as many dealers, customers and test drivers. The list should highlight the tremendous amount of danger this car has had to deal with. I could have also purchased a new one – but I needed a car for men: men, who smoke pipes. Therefore, I happily chose the scrubbed one. 

The car had an adventurous smell. That is, it did not smell like flounders, but rather like sardines in oil because in the stand-mode, it needed half a litre of Castrol per night. (In winter, the car wanted even more since the nights were longer.) 

First of all, I open the bonnet. This is easy: you take a strong square key from the cockpit (near the transmission tunnel) and you put it in a fitting hole next to the right or left side of the car. Then, you turn it and walk to the other side of the car. To be honest, it does not really matter if you walk around the front or the back. Maybe, you only save two minutes. 

Then, you put the square key into the hole and turn it around again. Now, you powerfully lift the car. Everything that lifts is part of the bodywork and everything that remains on ground is part of the chassis. If both parts get up, you have made a mistake. Prior to that, you have to loosen the tongue that comes to the surface in the middle of the windscreen next to the bonnet’s edge. If the bonnet suddenly opens (it is actually not the bonnet, but the whole car), then you should give your suit for cleaning. You only reach the tongue by means of deeply pressing your body onto the bodywork. 

If you want to participate in a competition with your car and you have to go under the bonnet, the race will be gladly over for you in the act of closing. 

For now, the bonnet is open and I am happily rewarded thanks to my effort. The car has made a striptease and is almost naked. The car’s most noble parts are here in front of me. I am flabbergasted! 

The bonnet must have been tailored in a skinny manner over the engine because I now question that I will ever be able to close it again. The engine literally overflows into my direction. Intake air is filtered in a body of the natural size of a jam bucket. Everything has tremendous dimensions, you would be able to move a juggernaut with it. In front of my eyes, 265 impatient SAE horses are scratching the oil sump. And one torque of 36 mkg literally bares its teeth. 

Why do I always put myself in such situations! My hand that reaches out for the oil rob is restrainedly vibrating. 

I promise my car that today I won’t cross the “normal speed up to 210”. Then, I refill the oil. But I try to look calm since people have already surrounded my car. Around this area, there are not so many television aerials. Therefore, the people are happy and thankful if something happens on the street. 

Kids look at the speedo and are screaming that – this cannot be ignored by anyone within some metres – the speedo goes up to 200. The man with rimless glasses that tries to correct the cheering because the speedo only goes up to 160 is not able to win through since another ginger-haired kid persuades him otherwise.   

Now, it becomes obvious that the audience expects a lot of me. My hands are sweating; I take the old driver gloves and put them on. Then, I let down the bodywork again and go on my way with the square key in my hand. 

Somehow, I have the impression that the guy with the rimless glasses wants to impose a life insurance contract on me. However, the kids take car that the guy is not able to enter the front again. The best “seats” are desperately taken. I would prefer to go into my house again, sit on the balcony while eating some biscuits. But, I cannot give up now! The little rascals would tell my daughter … . 

“Take car,” I tell my conscience. “This car will wipe off at the back just as the tail of a furious alligator!” There are cars, which hurl in the sand. And there are horses that go off with sincere impatience. Once, this happened to me when I was sitting on one. But no one talks of safety belts … . 

“This is a bomb,” one of the kids, who usually cries through his teeth like a 250 “Goggomobil”, when he is on his scooter, screams. 

I say: “Yes, you can also brush the carpets.” I think my nerves are right now hauling on the kerb. If I will ever drive in a race, then it has to take place out of the public gaze. If not, I will have a breakdown even before the starting signal. Why isn’t anybody calling me? 

If I would have a small pot right now, I would lubricate everything with a hole. But I do not have a small pot right now. 

However, in my hand, I have the ignition key. I throw it up, but it lands in my hand again. This has probably looked awesome as if Eddie Constantin is whirling his pistol again around his fingers shortly before he pulls the trigger. I have never wanted all of this. 

No the audience is silent just as you know it form the theatre. The light darkens and the curtains begin to shale. 

I feel like a curtain … . 

The denotation that was expected by the people after pressing the start button fails to appear. The engine is well-behaved and turns with 650. However, back then, the horse was looking at me with a euthanizing naivety of an old wing char shortly before it went off. Just in case, I briefly turn on the gas and people are running behind the straw bales. This extremely strengthens my ego.  

Shift to the low gear and off we go! Over a long silver-shining muzzle, I look on the black asphalt and I feel the power of the flounder running through my veins. If somebody is still shaking, then it can only be someone in the audience. 

The E starts to eat the street. Now, I think about that I picked my flat with caution since by the end of the first gear, I am out of the village. I take the second gear, which tries to resist, but I can handle it and I take the first turns at 90 km/h. Then, I change into the third gear. This one is said to be compatible up to 180 km/h. After seven kilometres, I reach the motorway. The fourth gear. The engine returns the favour with 160 km/h at 4,200 rotations. 

Wow! First of all, you have to clutch the pedal slowly, scan the ride feeling, brake, speed up, take several steering maneuvers. This is an unbelievable feeling! 

The car is riveted to my seat of the pants: as tight as possible. I am not driving a car, but rather my bum has wheels. I think and the car reacts as if it were part of my legs. Maybe you should read this sentence once more. Please forgive me this style, but that is the only one I possess. 

Now I am driving with “normal speed”; tachometer shows 5,000; the speedometer needle shows 190. I could speed up to 210 taking thanks to my tyre pressure. But I content myself with 200. It is nothing! 

You only have to turn the cap’s sign to the back in time just as our parents used to do around a speed of 70. The air turned up the collar and its edges are punching me in the face. But that’s all, nothing else! 

I have the feeling of being fast – I exactly have this kind of feeling: and I wonder why is everybody driving so slowly today. A 400 Lloyd even seems to roll back. 

And my E is simply behaving as having a good day. That’s all. The windows are open, the hood is lowered and the heating is on: full speed ahead! In doing so, I enjoy a summertime drive at the end of October.  

“Ram-ta-ta-tam”, I would love to sing and you would even hear since the vehicle is not roaring. He only makes the noise of sawing up the air. 

Every time, when you experience a feeling for the first time, it is always the best. However, it doesn’t happen quite often since not many such feelings even exist. Now, I have even experienced such a feeling. I think it is the second most fascinating feeling in the world. 

I say this not because of the speed level of 200 – these are only 10 more than the other day – but because of the charm that these 200 bring in its wake. This is not a ride on a non-round cannonball. This feels as if you would be uncoiled like a string around a warp knitting machine. I want to be an endless string. 

But some people tie a knot around me. An American driven by a Belgian comes in front of my body with 160 convinced that he is the fastest in the world. Only by means of a trick, I am able to bypass him. I go back to 150 turning seemingly resigning to the right. “Aha!”, that is what he thinks: “he is giving up!” And he moves to the side with satisfaction. And now the E truly turns into a jaguar. Like a feline predator, he speeds up hissing from 150 to 190. 

36 mkg have a huge impact on roughly 1,150 kg vehicle weight and you eventually have to feel a power/weight ratio of nearly 4.3 kg per HP in your stomach region. When accelerating, the stomach sounds the alarm! And it causes nothing more than a smile. 

The nerves rest upon cotton wool, ready for action. And when you finally need them, they are crusty as ever. 

It is not the process of driving that causes you energy, but only the one or the other situation. 

Since nobody is driving alone on the streets! 

A lighter limousine, specially constructed for the batch “leaf dancing in the autumn” is wagging along the line. The lorry driver assumes that the emerging silvery fish is nothing more that a spot of sunlight and shifts into overdrive. An MG driver tries escape from me and also turns left in order to drive past all the others. He doesn’t sense that he is only breaking ground tiredly. 

I notice that people underestimate the emerging jaguar. Maybe, he looks like a Krmann-Ghia from afar? However, only when he covers the whole rear-view mirror, spontaneous side leaps take place. He should get a red line and this red line should be seen as a warning. 

You do not annoy anybody. You only request proper driving regulations. 

The wind stiffly blows the autumn leaves to the left over the road; trees line are lining as fishing rods and the limousines tug in the nerves of the drivers that have the ambition to uphold the speed of – at least – 100 or 90. 

Only the jaguar is surrounded by dead calm, right? 

The jaguar wounds the thread, unswervingly. 

You sit in a very low position, but everything is manageable. You are not able to drive him when you have long arms; you have to have very long arms. Something is wrong with the pedals because the foot never fully reaches the brake pedal, but only the pedal to the right. In doing so, it is true that the break effect does not suffer, but you disturb the pleasure when using it. Maybe, it becomes habitual compared to the changing the gear. You have to take a break between the first and the second one at least for half a second. Otherwise, the clutch breaks. 

A species disease of the flounder? But she drives so wonderfully fast; she accelerates as effortless as a young pike. 

However, it would have been truly unfair to stop the scrubbed flounder. It would not be fair to the Jaguar E and my family. The flounder had her pitfalls. While driving fast, she made efforts to tear off all her bodywork since the bonnet’s shutter loosened and one of the doors opened up voluntarily, which I was only able to close with violence again. And at the end of each drive on the motorway, the tread grooves were almost completely disrupted. Remember: such a flounder wants to be scrubbed, but rather she needs care and supervision! 

Since 265 HP (even if only SAE) heavily influence the lifeblood of such a car – if you let her enjoy life. 

You should use her wisely; it is simple. 

You can drive this care even if you do not possess much flair (apart from the start, when the horses lean on the back wheels). In urban traffic, the fourth gear corresponds to 49 km/h, but when you are in the third gear, you can do almost everything that you want. And if you wish, you can even drive quietly. However, if you wish otherwise, the flounder can also roar. In doing so, she takes on every curve. We should celebrate a new saying for this: she lies like a flounder! 

You will not feel as secure as in any other limousine. She proves that it is all about the reserves – HP reserves, reserves of stopping power, reserves of chassis produce a maximum feeling of security. You do not have to speed up to 200 or more. Should rather leave something in the car that is actually now unsuited for the street. But one thing is for certain: incessant satisfaction is guaranteed! 

This car can be compared to the situation when a man is left alone with a bottle of whiskey. He has two options: the one is that he has the magnitude of self-control or he has the routine and maturity to cope with the whiskey’s full power. 

If we consider all the possibilities that slumber peacefully in the Jaguar E, you should not have a driver’s license, but rather a gun license. Even if you are not fully aware of the fact that you are driving with 190 km/h, you should never forget it: at no time! 

The car was silver-grey, had blank spoke wheels and a red leather interior, a short and stiff gear lever on the high transmission tunnel next to which you are almost sitting while driving, a dashboard suited for blind flying and a changeable steering column like a telescope. 

The steering wheel was wooden and it felt like a morning in May at Lake Maggiore. This comparison should illustrate that you are aware of the fact there is so much more to come during this wonderful day. It was a car that could be lubricated with the small pot. I unwillingly returned the car. Everywhere, people looked around. Wherever I was, girls were flirting with me when they saw me in that car. It was a hot time of my life. 

What a car! 

Data & Facts

The Jaguar E Type was built from 1961 to 1975; in total, 72,507 vehicles; 6-cylinder engine, 3781 ccm displacement, 269 SAE-HP at 5,500 rpm, maximum speed 240 km/h, fuel consumption 15 l with 100 km/h.