1961 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 ‘Flat Floor’ Race Car

Browns Lane built the Jaguar E-Type for racing, but it never did. As dedicated Jaguar enthusiasts have proven, an early ‘Flat Floor’ Jaguar E-Type is perfectly suited for racing and track action because it is closest to Jaguar’s E1A prototype. They are a rare sight at classic car auctions, because owners want to hang onto them, but here we have one.

There’s a strong case to argue that for a certain period in the 1950s and 1960s, a 6,759m stretch of road in Northwestern France played a more influential role in car design than any Virgil Exner or Battista Pininfarina.

The Mulsanne Straight is where winners and losers discovered their fate at successive 24-hour Le Mans events. Because it was here, along its 4.2 miles of arrow-straight black ribbon, that the fastest cars could reach the highest speeds. Hitting the maximum here negated any advantage that nimbler cars with lower top speeds might achieve on the circuit’s corners.

Car manufacturers had been aware of this problem for many years. Pre-war racers had tried – and largely failed – to create streamlined cars that could go faster for longer along the Mulsanne’s bumpy, unwavering drive towards the horizon. In the face of these failures, the solution had usually been to ‘add power’ in the form of bigger and more powerful engines. It wasn’t until the arrival of the jet age, fuelled by the innovations of the Second World War, that streamlining became the science of aerodynamics and the whole Mulsanne-slaying shebang really kicked into gear.

The result was one of classic motoring’s most influential and evocative cars: the Jaguar E-Type.

Browns Lane’s bid for Le Mans glory took a convoluted route. The drive to conquer Mulsanne led to more powerful cars, which, on June 11th 1955, led to a tragedy that changed car racing forever. Continuous increases in power, to solve the Mulsanne problem, hadn’t been accompanied by improvements in safety for drivers or race-goers, and the result was a catastrophic car accident that killed 83 people.

Jaguar anticipated that the accident would lead to lower-powered cars with smaller engines. To address this shortfall and secure continued, Ferrari-beating, success at Le Mans, a small team of engineers at Jaguar, led by Malcolm Sayer, began work in the mid-1950s to conceive what would become the E-Type. This prototype car was known as E1A – hence E-Type.

A factory fire and the realisation that Jaguar didn’t actually need Le Mans to sell cars meant that those plans morphed from a slippery race car into a showroom star.

Jaguar never officially took the E-Type to Le Mans, but many, many people have raced it there and elsewhere. And now you can too.

1961 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 ‘Flat Floor’ Race Car For Auction

We have an exceptionally early 1961 Series 1 coupe race car available for auction. It is, of course, a ‘Flat Floor’ so as close to E1A as the production car ever got.

It is car number 214 of the LHD FHC Series 1 coupe run, which were built through 1964. On return to the UK in 1995, it was extensively race-prepared by Colin Perry in 2002. For those new to Perry’s work, he is known as ‘E-Type Royalty’ because he previously owned chassis number 860004, the original ‘CUT 7′ and ‘EE400′ Equipe Endeavour Roadster, chassis number 850018.

The car later passed to well-known racer Peter Lanfranchi, who campaigned it alongside his brother and Barrie ‘Whizzo’ Williams at historic circuits across Europe. In 2017, this well-known car passed to John Young, who raced it at Goodwood and elsewhere.

In 2020, the car raced at Estoril in Portugal and then at the 80th GRRC meet in April 2023. It started 27th on the grid in the Moss Trophy, driven by Craig Davies, and achieved a very creditable 10th overall.

Finished in popular Opalescent grey metallic with a blue leather interior, this matching-numbers Flat Floor presents very well, as you likely expected, given its illustrious keepers and provenance. It comes to market with a valid FIA Historic Technical Passport to 31st December 2026 and is eligible for the GTS 7 FIA Class, plus hill climb and rally and racing events. Alternatively, it could be used on the road as it carries UK registration paperwork.

You can find out more about this Jaguar E-Type auction car here.