Jaguar E-Type Lightweight Recreated

Women think in an emotional level. Men like to, they're doers. They're hunters, fixers, they tinker. And cars offer an opportunity to tinker, to see the results of your labor. It's an extension of your ego. You can do something and you get immediate results. You know, if you modify it and you do it right, it's faster, it's better looking. It's just a visceral thing that guys seem to hook onto. When I went away to college, I went to Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo. I was studying mechanical engineering. My very first professor was a Jaguar enthusiast. And all the engineering problems were based on Jaguar motors. And that kind of got me hooked on Jaguars. I thought they were really fascinating. I have to keep developing the car to make it go faster because the older I get, the slower I'm going. So I have to make the car faster to compensate for it. This was just a street car I bought in the mid-70s and I converted it into a race car. I built it myself and it's been an evolution. Every few years, I'm always modifying something, making some change to make it go faster. Well, I started racing in SCCA in the mid-70s. I ran an H-production Sprite. And then eventually I worked my way up into a GT1 E-type that I built because I was in the Jaguar business. I wanted to promote Jaguars. I raced it in SCCA for a few years, but I had a growing family, a growing business. It was too expensive. And then I switched to vintage racing. And I've had this car, I've raced it over 30 years. I just love the E-type. It's beautiful to look at. It sounds great. It's very fun to drive. The wheel base to track ratio is just perfect for drifting. And I've just loved the car. I've raced it for forever. It's an original 64 3.8 E-type Jag. It's been highly modified. It's got forged pistons, Carrillo rods, heavy-duty oil pump, special vibration dampener, aluminum flywheel, magneto ignition, 48-millimeter Webers, hand-built headers for it. It's a really trick motor. It's not the most powerful motor, but it gets the job done. It's been very reliable. Then it's made it to a special racing gearbox, a magnesium differential. The rear suspension's highly modified. I've done a lot of trick stuff to it that I'm not gonna tell everyone. And I've just slowly developed the suspension and brakes over the years. In this group, in B production, I'm the only car without a V8. So I'm giving away 100 to 200 horsepower to every car out there. So I gotta make it up in handling and brakes. The interior, you know, the dash top is stock, the windshield, the door frames, the doors are aluminum, the fenders are aluminum. You know, the interior is fairly stripped out to just to get the weight down. It's got a full roll cage in it. It's developed as far as the rules allow for vintage racing. Custom made the oiling system, the cooling system. The rear suspension's pretty trick. I reckon there's a lot of handmade parts in that. Made our own sway bars. It's got special KONI racing shocks that we adapted to this car because they weren't made just for it. A lot of the stuff you have to hand make because there's not a big aftermarket of racing parts for E-Type, especially at this level. This motor is, like I say, a fairly mild motor. It's putting out about 320. I have another motor I just built for it that'll put out about 375. It won't be as reliable as this motor that I've run seven seasons on. The next motor, I'll be lucky if I get one or two seasons out of it. Jaguar's philosophy when they built sports cars, whether it was the XK120 or the E-Type, was to build the best performance sports car they could at a reasonable price. They were priced below Porsches and Ferraris of their day, but offered tremendous performance. They were actually faster. Their weak point was reliability because they didn't have the budget to really do it right, but they were a great car in their day. There was nothing in 62 when this car came out. Nothing had more power. Nothing had a better suspension. Nothing had better brakes. When I built this car, I styled it to look like one of the factory lightweight E-Types. They were built to run at Le Mans, and they had very specific regulations. The leather straps were required at Le Mans as a safety so the hood wouldn't pop open. The little winglets behind the front wheels were designed because the French regulation said the rear of the wheel had to be covered, and that's what they're for. The rear fenders are copies of the original factory lightweight E-Types. Even the bonnet, which is slightly different than a standard E-Type, is a copy of the factory lightweight. So the car looks very similar to a factory lightweight, which they only built 12 of, and that's the look I was going for. Smaller cars develop better drivers. I mean, I started out racing a 948cc Bug Eye Sprite. You couldn't make a mistake anywhere on the track. It would take you a half a lap to get your speed back. I've also raced 454 Corvettes. You can mistake with those and floor it, and you don't even know the difference. You're back up to speed instantly. So this is a car that you have to learn to drive smooth. You have to learn to drive hard through the turns. A lot of the Corvette guys, they go in hard down the straights, and they kind of tip through the turns and then just rely on the power to pull them back up on the straights. So my personal opinion is smaller bore cars make you drive better. Modern cars, as angular and functional as they are, they work better, but they don't have that emotional connection. To me, a car with curves is always better looking. Makes it look easy. After 17 laps of racing, he takes the checkered flag.