I’ve featured many of the amazing Jaguars in the collection of Philippe Reyns before, including his XK-SS and pre-war SS100, but I’ve rarely displayed the first car I met him in, his black Series 1, 3.8 E-type. Philippe and his wonderful wife Francoise attended the 2006 Going To The Sun Rally in this E-type. It is in much better condition than mine. We’ve become friends and now I always get together with them when they come to the Seattle area (except this past year when I was out of town when they were in!)
As for the functional beauty of the E-type’s louvered bonnet, it is clear from the D-type predecessor that the function is really required on the left (exhaust) side of the bonnet, but the right (intake) side was also louvered to balance the appearance. I may be wrong on this, so hard-core gearheads feel free to correct me. Of course it all went “banana-shaped” as the Brits say with the Series 3 E-type in 1971 when they had to put shielding under the louvers to keep rain off the cylinder heads of the wider-than-XK V-12 engine.
Regardless of all the above, it is beautiful, isn’t it?