Are Jaguar "E" types overpriced?

[2xChevrons]

CanAm said:

Apart from the cover photo, it also shows how motoring magazines have "dumbed down" over the years.

It does. I have on a my bookshelf a stack of old Autocars from the 1950s- at random I pulled down one from May 21, 1954. The big story is the launch of the Series II Morris Oxford. Like the 1961 issue the front cover is unashamedly a full-page BMC advert ("Meet the Entirely New 'Quality First' Morris Oxford Series II. So Much Better - More Of Everything - More Power - More Room - More Comfort - More 'Quality First' Features"), but the actual feature is like an engineering lecture. Spread across five pages and about 2500 densely-types words, only the final paragraph of about 80 words is actually concerned with driving the car. The rest is a thorough run-down of the design, engineering and construction. It has a nice double-spread Max Millar cutaway, plus drawings illustrating the vaporising inlet system, the engine's oil circuit, the front suspension, a section through the rear lamp units, a full description of the fresh air heating system with cross-section and isometric projection drawings and another drawing of the front seat adjuster mechanism.

The actual text is full of sentences like "the I-section connecting rods have a centre distances of 6 1/2in; the split clamp little-end boss is symmetrical with the centre line of the main section of the road, which is offset from the centre line of the crankpin when viewed from the side of the engine; consequently each "pair" of cylinder bores has a centre spacing which is greater than that of each pair of crankpins." Or "road wheel movement is controlled by an upper wishbone consisting of two pressings, the inner fulcrum bearing housing being attached to the main structure by means of bolts; the necessary movement for wheel deflection and steering is provided by means of a bearing block which is pivoted to the outer end of the top wishbone by means of a rubber bush and contains a metal bearing for the swivel pins."

lowdrag said:

What has that to do with the price of cheese, pray? Technological marvels abound through history. Mitsubishi pay homage to the invention in 1904 of the balancer shaft by Lanchester, The Traction Avant was a milestone in FWD cars. But we don't seem to celebrate many anniversaries just like we celebrated the 50th of the Mini and the E-type, to my recollection. The word we seek is"icon" and while the DS is admirable, it has never caught the public's imagination just like the two above. Maybe it should have, but frankly it didn't. To be able to change a wheel without a jack is admirable, but not something that immediately comes to mind. The DS was slippery, comfortable, avant-garde, but personally I could never get used to the braking system. A wonderful car, but the thread is about E-types.

My bias is obvious in my username, but it's an interesting point. The DS, for me, what the E-type seems to be for many in this thread. And equally there are plenty of people who don't get why people like me fawn over the DS and its ilk in the same way I just don't get the love for the E-type.

I'm going to sound like a real snob here, but please bear in mind I am talking in broad generalisations - the appeal of the E-type is very obvious. It has the 'schoolkid with his nose pressed up against the showroom glass' factor. It's sleek, fast and sexy, all the more so in the context of 1961. The DS was a real quantum leap over the state of the art in 1955 (far more than the Jaguar was six years later) but it's not sporty or particularly glamorous. It's a car to appreciate with your head rather than your heart. The DS was the French equivalent of a big Wolseley saloon - a comfy, mass-produced, fairly expensive saloon designed for wafting along in great comfort at low speeds. it had an engine developed in the 1930s and by the time the E-type was launched the towns of France were full of black base-spec ID19s being used as taxis. For all its brilliant thinking and bold design (with the exception of the engine every single aspect of the DS was not only new but revolutionary) the DS was never a particularly desirable car, especially in the UK.

iSore said:

The DS was a technical dead end. As good as it was, some fairly ordinary coil spring stuff soon caught up with it.

When was the last Jaguar IRS made? 15 years ago on the final DB7? That was undoubtedly a longer lasting design.

And the last hydropneumatic Citroen was made last year after a continual production run of 62 years. Nowhere near as widely-copied or developed as the Jaguar system but one could quibble over which was 'longer lasting'.

I could also quibble over 'ordinary coil spring stuff' bettering the DS's ride quality. It was more that conventional suspension technology advanced to the point where it could offer 90% of hydropneumatic's ride for 50% of the cost. And, to Citroen's chagrin, the market at large didn't want that final nth degree of ride comfort or any of hydropneumatic's other advantages, especially at the perceived cost, complexity and lack of 'sporty' road manners. Of course Jaguar itself led much of that effort with the likes of the XJ which made you question why Citroen were bothering given what Jag acheived with fairly ordinary but brilliantly developed and tuned steel spring systems. But no conventional system approaches the platonic ideal of a suspension system, free of dynamic or geometric compromises, like hydropneumatic did or does.

[lowdrag]

Great post. Thank you.

[coppice]

2 Chevrons - your erudition has made my day , thank you. I remember being awed at the ride comfort of a DS taxi I rode in on my first trip to France , entranced by a drive in a CX , beguiled by the Visa's 'satellite' control pod and I adored the 2 CV I thrashed for two years in the 80s .I seem to remember that Ligier even used an adaptation of Citroen suspension on one of its F1 cars ?

No , it's nowt to do with E-Types but like all the best conversations it 's a 'long lane with turnings', if I may quote Long John Kickstart .

[P5BNij]

Here here, but I must disagree on one thing in 2xChevron's cracking post - the DS to me has always oozed its own strange kind of glamour, just as much as the SM did later on. I've only ever ridden in one DS, just over ten years when I went to view a P6 down in Wiltshire, the seller also dealt in DSs and had one on his drive which he took me for a spin in while the P6 was being cleaned, I'm not sure which model it was but it left an impression on me which has barely been matched since then, a feeling of otherworldyness unlike anything else I've been in or driven.

[Penguinracer]

It's often said that a true car enthusiast troubles him/herself with an Alfa at some stage in their automotive flirtations...but I think you can add any of the hydropneumatic Citroens to that list of automotive badges of honour.

The late hydropneumatic cars e.g.CX GTi turbo II & BX GTi 16 valve MkII exhibited a superb compromise between the magic carpet ride of the ID/DS cars and the performance handling of late '80's - early '90's midsize sports saloons.

I'll never forget my lovely BX GTi 16 Valve Mk2 - cut down in its prime by an errant GP running a stop-sign in his torpor-inducing grey Volvo 340 at the entrance to the Cheddar Gorge.

Too young to go - its brief life ended by the clay-footed Swede.

[2xChevrons]

P5BNij said:

Here here, but I must disagree on one thing in 2xChevron's cracking post - the DS to me has always oozed its own strange kind of glamour, just as much as the SM did later on. I've only ever ridden in one DS, just over ten years when I went to view a P6 down in Wiltshire, the seller also dealt in DSs and had one on his drive which he took me for a spin in while the P6 was being cleaned, I'm not sure which model it was but it left an impression on me which has barely been matched since then, a feeling of otherworldyness unlike anything else I've been in or driven.

You won't get any disagreement from me personally - I was merely ruminating (prompted by lowdrag) on why the DS doesn't have the same emotional, cultural and financial pull as the E-type. Speaking only for myself I would take a DS over an E-type in a heartbeat. In fact, given infinite resources an E-type would still come a long, long, long way down my list because, as I said before, they simply don't tug at my heart or please my head in the way that the Citroen (or a Rover P6, for that matter) does.

You said it yourself that the DS has glamour, but of a strange kind. Which is absolutely true. Just as most classic Citroens aren't typical 'Pistonhead' fodder, majoring as they do on completely isolating you from the experience of driving and just conveying you slowly but comfortably. I like Alex Moulton's summary:

"The first time I drove a D-Series I understood why the French were a nation of philosophers. Here was a car so comfortable, so stable but so slow that you could prop a book by Voltaire or Sartre in front of you on the steering wheel and read it as you drove from one end of France to the other."

The E-type's glamour is very obvious and emotional. It's about classical beauty, power, speed and thrusting phallic bonnet shapes. It was raced and driven by millionaires, jet-setters, playboys and film stars. No one has to explain why they like the E-type.

The DS has that 'strange glamour' - it's an intellectual car. It's not classically beautiful, but instead it has to be analysed like a piece of modernist art in the terms of its function and its materials. At first glance it's easy to dismiss it as a big, floaty car with an asthmatic engine. In France it was bought by middle-class professionals - doctors, lawyers, civil servants, professors, architects and the like. In the UK its appeal was even more esoteric and it tended to be the preserve of humanities academics, well-off creatives and professional engineers. Not the sort of people who set the fashion trends of the decade.

The Citroen's not going to pass the 'seven year-old schoolboy' test, and if any kids ask a DS owner "how fast does it go, mister?" they're going to be disappointed with the answer. They're not going to be impressed if you start wittering on about progressive spring rates, constant geometry steering, automatic load-biasing brakes or any that waffle. The DS is a car to be considered, discussed, disected and interpreted. You used the description 'otherworldly' which is a lovely one-word summation of how it feels to drive a DS but it also makes it rather aloof and hard to engage with. To keep name-dropping French philosophers (because they're the DS equivalent of the race reports of Graham Hill, Mike Parkes and Lee Mueller), Roland Barthes wrote and entire essay on the DS and reckoned it was France's 20th century equivalent of a medieval cathedral:

"We are therefore dealing here with a humanized art, and it is possible that the DS marks a change in the mythology of cars. Until now, the ultimate in cars belonged rather to the bestiary of power; here it becomes at once more spiritual and more object-like, and despite some concessions to neomania (such as the empty steering wheel), it is now more homely , more attuned to this sublimation of the utensil which one also finds in the design of contemporary household equipment.The dashboard looks more like the working surface of a modern kitchen than the control room of a factory; the slim panes of matt fluted metal, the small levers topped by a white ball, the very simple dials, the very discreetness of the nickel-work, all this signifies a kind of control exercised over motion rather than performance. One is obviously turning from an alchemy of speed to a relish in driving."

[TooMany2cvs]

Penguinracer said:

It's often said that a true car enthusiast troubles him/herself with an Alfa at some stage in their automotive flirtations...but I think you can add any of the hydropneumatic Citroens to that list of automotive badges of honour.

<considers own history>
1 x 75, 1 x 155
1 x GSA, 4 x CX, 2 x XM
st.

OTOH, nearest I've been to Jag ownership was an s3 XJ6 that a mate was selling for a perfectly reasonable sum - it was very nice indeed, but manual and cloth just seemed wrong.

[DonkeyApple]

Love the DS. Incredibly stylish wagon and very cool.

It does suffer from the same problem as the Etype though. Just as every Etype owner will at some point tell you what Enzo Ferrari said, so every DS owner will tell you that the suspension was used by Rolls.

[uk66fastback]

[quote=vpr]Use them, this was my last E before my current one. I dragged it out of a barn with half a roof where it had sad for years and full of water. Restored just the mechanicals and it drove like new.





I think that Jag looks fantastic. Just thinking why I turned down a chance to buy a resale red S1.5 in about 1982 - when I was as green as anything and running about in a Hillman Hunter. Probably the ear-blasting my dad would have given me.

It was full of filler though

[lowdrag]

This thread has gone - deliciously - off topic with some posts that should be immortalised. So in an attempt at a rapprochement of the two camps, and to go even further off topic what would you take from each of the two cars to make "the best car in the world"? I'll start you off and say I would keep the Jaguar engine, a tour-de-force for its day in my humble opinion. But then you may disagree of course.

[coppice]

The E-Type's headlights , rear window and haunches would be a good start . But the DS is more of a challenge - it's almost impossible to disaggregate the best bits from the rest . But I'd start with keeping its DRG- down the road graphics- as few things look so effortlessly classy as a DS in one's mirror . And we can probably lose the engine - never the DS's trump card was it ?

And - ever further off topic - there might even be a parallel between Lotus and Citroen to be drawn . They had different objectives - one comfort , the other speed - but neither was especially noted for its engines (exception for 2CV twin and Lotus twin cam perhaps ) , both majored on iconoclasm and innovation , suspension and damping was their strongest suit but both ended up becoming more and more mainstream as the public at large never quite 'got it '.

[TooMany2cvs]

coppice said:

And - ever further off topic - there might even be a parallel between Lotus and Citroen to be drawn

A now-deceased friend had one of the very first Ds in the country in 1957. He ran a bookshop in North London and, not long after getting the D, he looked out to find a youngish chap having a very, VERY good look over it. Yes, ACBC.

[a8hex]

How about a heretical suggestions, an on topic post.
I find it amusing that we have this thread suggesting that E-Types are over priced while there was a posting the other day about a Mk3 Escort going for over 40K and there is a thread about a Ferrari going for a cool £52M. Neither are my cup of tea, I've driven far too many Mk3 Escorts to ever want to do it again so I for one just don't get that one at all. The Ferrari is rare and has racing pedigree, it's just doesn't appeal to me. But in the context of those prices perhaps this thread should be more about why E-Types are undervalued.

[2xChevrons]

lowdrag said:

This thread has gone - deliciously - off topic with some posts that should be immortalised. So in an attempt at a rapprochement of the two camps, and to go even further off topic what would you take from each of the two cars to make "the best car in the world"? I'll start you off and say I would keep the Jaguar engine, a tour-de-force for its day in my humble opinion. But then you may disagree of course.

Really you'd end up with something very close to the SM, which was Citroen's take on a 2+2 grand tourer (which is what the E-type had become by 1970) and was the only big Citroen (pre-XM) to have an engine on a par with the rest of it. It has what was probably the finest development of the hydropneumatic suspension, plus all the other holistic hydraulic features such as DIRAVI steering. It's much, much better-proportioned than the E-type coupe but has many of the same basic styling elements (big flat bonnet, cowled headlamps, tapering rear with a wrap-around screen). The Maserati engine is a DOHC unit (like the XK6) but in V-form (at exactly the same time that Jaguar was looking at a DOHC version of the V12).

coppice said:

And - ever further off topic - there might even be a parallel between Lotus and Citroen to be drawn . They had different objectives - one comfort , the other speed - but neither was especially noted for its engines (exception for 2CV twin and Lotus twin cam perhaps ) , both majored on iconoclasm and innovation , suspension and damping was their strongest suit but both ended up becoming more and more mainstream as the public at large never quite 'got it '.

It's a worthy comparison. I haven't driven enough modern Lotus products to weigh in as to whether they've lost their purity in comparison to the classic stuff. But in terms of absolute ride quality Citroen no Citroen matches a DS. It was the only Citroen made with absolute dedication to ride quality and stability, with no concession to what the average person would consider 'handling' or 'sportiness' - a DS actually has very good roadholding and is dynamically much more capable than its size and softness would suggest, but to the average punter brought up in a world where 'stiff=sporty' and familiar only with the inevitable ride/handling compromise of a conventiona suspension system, it was a very hard sell. Every other big Citroen introduced some sort of compromise to try and make it behave more like a conventional car. The CX had slightly less wheel travel and slightly fiercer damping than the DS. The Series 2 CXs were firmed up even more and the GTi and Turbo models stiffened even further. The XM introduced twin-mode Hydractive to try and square the circle, giving both Citroen-like ride comfort and BMW-like cornering but introduced a whole lot of electronic complexity and the result was too conventional for the Citroenistas and still 'Citroen' to tempt people out of their Mercs and Jags.

Post-Peugeot takeover the big problem with Citroens is that they were forced to use Peugeot Macpherson strut front suspension because all Citroens from the BX onwards were built on Peugeot platforms. Citroen had never used the strut due to its implications for ride quality but the expensive combination of hydraulics, double wishbones and leading arms was never going to get past the PSA accountants. So even with Citroen's best efforts a Peugeot-era car was never going to ride as well as its predecessors. Plus (partly under Peugeot influence) Citroen lost confidence in its own system - instead of promoting its superiority it spent a lot of time and money trying to make the system behave like a decent steel-spring system, putting in stiffer spring and stronger damper rates with ever-reducing wheel travel (analogous to Porsche spending decades engineering its way around the inherent characteristics of a rear-mounted engine). The C6 rides very well but it doesn't feel like a big Citroen, especially in extremis when driven hard over a bumpy road. By the last of the C5s the system was really little more than an over-complicated way of getting self-levelling suspension with fairly ordinary ride quality.

Of course for both Citroen and Lotus part of their problem was how good conventional engineering became. An Alfasud, with Macpherson struts and a beam rear axle, drives as nicely as a Lotus Elan at what must be a fraction of the production cost and parts count. Unless you make a habit of driving over war-smashed French pave roads at 50mph for hours at a time a Jaguar XJ6 is as good as a DS23 when it comes to ride comfort. The benefit of a Citroen suspension system or Lotus dynamics were clear and obvious (and worth the price premium) when the average was a Ford Zephyr. When the average becomes a Ford Mondeo Mk1 then it becomes much harder to sell.

And (to bring this somewhat back towards the original topic) this is a problem Jaguar has never had - ever since the IRS system was introduced the cars have always been praised for providing a superb blend of ride and handling (while most competitors manage one or the other) and usually at a third of the cost. So in the long run you can't fault Jaguar's ethos of conventional, if modern, engineering developed over the years to the nth degree.

[aeropilot]

Given Citroen had a big factory in the UK since the 1920's, up until selling it to Mars in the mid 60's, it is odd that the wonderful DS never really made much of an impact sales wise in the UK....?

I'm not a French car fan at all, with the sole exception of the DS........an example of which would definitely sneak into my 20-25 car Lottery Win car collection

I've noticed there's a couple of very nice examples currently for sale in UK at the moment at very serious prices.........!

[iSore]

2xChevrons said:

And the last hydropneumatic Citroen was made last year after a continual production run of 62 years. Nowhere near as widely-copied or developed as the Jaguar system but one could quibble over which was 'longer lasting'.

I could also quibble over 'ordinary coil spring stuff' bettering the DS's ride quality. It was more that conventional suspension technology advanced to the point where it could offer 90% of hydropneumatic's ride for 50% of the cost. And, to Citroen's chagrin, the market at large didn't want that final nth degree of ride comfort or any of hydropneumatic's other advantages, especially at the perceived cost, complexity and lack of 'sporty' road manners. Of course Jaguar itself led much of that effort with the likes of the XJ which made you question why Citroen were bothering given what Jag acheived with fairly ordinary but brilliantly developed and tuned steel spring systems. But no conventional system approaches the platonic ideal of a suspension system, free of dynamic or geometric compromises, like hydropneumatic did or does.

Good post.

Regarding hydropneumatic though, the CX rode well but could be caught out in the way a Peugeot 504, Granada or Alfetta would not. I'm glad they made it but I don't believe it was quite the miracle it was supposed to be. I thought the XM was a very average effort in terms of ride.

I would cross the road to look at a seventies CX Prestige - E Type, probably not. DS's are a bit too Islington for me, although the original single light DS19 is a great looking car.

[2xChevrons]

aeropilot said:

Given Citroen had a big factory in the UK since the 1920's, up until selling it to Mars in the mid 60's, it is odd that the wonderful DS never really made much of an impact sales wise in the UK....?

I'm not a French car fan at all, with the sole exception of the DS........an example of which would definitely sneak into my 20-25 car Lottery Win car collection

I've noticed there's a couple of very nice examples currently for sale in UK at the moment at very serious prices.........!

The factory at Slough built relatively small numbers (rarely more than 4000 cars per year) and they were for sale throughout the Commonwealth trade area - the factory only existed so Citroen could circumvent the 33% import tariff on foreign cars sold in the Empire market. So the number of DSs sold in the UK each year was tiny. They were also tweaked for our more conservative tastes with wooden dashboards, traditional Smiths instruments, Connolly leather seats and Lucas electrics. We also got our own specifications like the UK-specific DW which was in between the basic ID (only hydraulic suspension) and the DS (hydraulic everything). But it was never going to appeal in the UK. The market as a whole was (is?) too conservative. Plus, even if it was built in Slough the DS would always be a 'foreign' car, which immediately counted against it. And it just wasn't what the market wanted. At the UK DS's price and size level its rivals were big three-litre Wolseleys, Humbers and Rovers. You simply weren't going to be considering a Humber Super Snipe and be tempted into a DS unless you were already a fairly unconventional or Francophilic sort.

iSore said:

Good post.

Regarding hydropneumatic though, the CX rode well but could be caught out in the way a Peugeot 504, Granada or Alfetta would not. I'm glad they made it but I don't believe it was quite the miracle it was supposed to be. I thought the XM was a very average effort in terms of ride.

I would cross the road to look at a seventies CX Prestige - E Type, probably not. DS's are a bit too Islington for me, although the original single light DS19 is a great looking car.

The weakness of hydropneumatic has always been cross-track low-amplitude, sharp-profile bumps. Scabby expansion joints in concrete road surfaces is the classic one, or particularly nasty 'sleeping policemen'. The system has side-to-side interconnection (the suspension units at the front are connected laterally to each other, as are the ones at the back) to provide a degree of roll control (hydropneumatic has zero inherent roll resistance) and to help convert wallow into bounce. When one wheel at each end hits an obstacle some pressure is transferred to the unit on the other side. The problem is that if both wheels hit a bump at the same time then you get a simultaneous rise in pressure on both sides - the excess pressure has nowhere to go, the entire system virtually locks solid for a brief moment and you get a nasty thump right through the body.

'Proper' Citroens deal with this by having bespoke tyres with tall, soft sidewalls and suspension with very low-stiction action (soft bushing on the wishbones and leading arms running in massive and very expensive taper-roller bearings). When Peugeot forced the use of Macpherson struts it made the problem even worse because not only do Macpherson struts not score well when it comes to feeding sharp bumps straight into the body but the design works on the assumption that all suspension loads are purely vertical along the axis of the strut. In fact, because cars move forward and ride is a dynamic multi-dimensional thing, there is always some side load and the large contact area between the inner and outer parts of the strut means there is inherently a lot of stiction, making the hydropneumatic's distate for short, sharp shocks even worse.

The other weakness, particularly on the DS, was flowing high-speed crests and humps. If it was sufficently long and high-energy it could make the car float for long enough for the suspension to think that it was riding too high and open the height correctors to lower it back down. This was usually timed just right for the car to then reach the end of the crest and go into compression, just as the suspension was on the way down so the whole car would flop onto its bump stops. They got ride of the worst of that with the CX by improving the design of the height correctors so they had a slightly longer response period.

Sorry, I've now thoroughly derailed this E-type thread! (My work here is done...)

Edited by 2xChevrons on Wednesday 6th June 11:37

[swisstoni]

2xChevrons said:

Sorry, I've now thoroughly derailed this E-type thread! (My work here is done...)

Edited by 2xChevrons on Wednesday 6th June 11:37

Don't worry it had been thoroughly derailed before your involvement.

[Pat H]

Don’t apologise

That was very interesting

Thanks

[Yertis]

Pat H said:

Don’t apologise

That was very interesting

Thanks

Seconded – I like Jags and Citroens about the same amount, i.e. quite a lot but not quite enough to buy one, and this kind of intelligent discussion is the perfect compliment to a mug of coffee (or as it happens today, Lemsip).