By Michael Taylor
October 23, 2024
It’s fighting to stay relevant to new-vehicle buyers in the United States, but British automaker Jaguar has two guaranteed sales in its books after reviving the classic E-Type convertible.
Again.
Marking 50 years since the end of the E-Type’s production run, the company has turned to its own Jaguar Classic subsidiary to build two new E-Types from the original blueprints.
It’s not the first time Jaguar has asked its epoch-defining sports car to bring it some headlines, because it did it in 2014 with the E-Type Lightweight, when it revealed that it had only built 12 of the planned 18 cars back in its production run, so had six spare chassis.
It also turned out the E-Type Zero, the electric re-imagined version of the E-Type, which the U.K.’s Prince William used at his wedding, and cost around $470,000.
And, in 2021, Jaguar Classis offered a Reborn E-Type, where they restored E-Types, rather than building them from scratch, and charged around $410,000 for them.
This time around, Jaguar will only build two new E-Types off the blueprints for a south-east Asian buyer, and they’ll be moderately upgraded with a bluetooth sound system and a heated windshield.
They’ll both be powered by a modernized version of the classic, 3.8-liter straight six (used from 1961 to 1964), now running electronic fuel injection rather than sucking air through carburetors.
The bigger problem for Jaguar will come after it has sold its two E-Types.
Its U.S. sales have plummeted from 39,254 in 2017 to just 8348 last year (2023), and it’s a similar story the world over.
Jaguar Managing Director Rawdon Glover has been tasked with killing off the combustion-powered range and turning Jaguar into a three-tier Bentley fighter, at a similar price.
And to get there, he has admitted Jaguar’s retooling will mean it stops car production altogether for at least a year, and only the F-Type remains in production today, though even that will end late next year.
The first Jaguar off the new EV-only production philosophy will be a four-door GT with 430 miles of range, and a price tag of more than $140,000. It is due in 2025.
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