A reference archive
The Jaguar E-Type, written down properly
What the car is, how to tell the series apart, how many were built, how the engine works, and what it takes to keep one on the road. Free to read, with no advertising and nothing for sale.
Series 1 fixed-head coupe. The long bonnet, covered headlights and wire wheels are characteristic of the earliest cars.
This is an independent archive about the Jaguar E-Type, written and maintained by Jon Cosson, who owns a Series 1. It exists because the reliable answers turned out to be harder to find than they should be.
Much of what is genuinely known about these cars sits in forum threads, in club archives, and inside the editorial pages of firms whose real business is selling cars. This site tries to answer the question instead of selling you something.
It is written for owners and would-be owners: anyone trying to identify a car, understand how it works, or decide what a tired example needs next.
Free, and honest about its sources
The archive is free to read. It carries no advertising, no affiliate links and no sponsored content, and nothing on it is for sale.
Where a figure comes from a published source, that source is named in the text. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is set out rather than resolved by picking a favourite. Where something cannot be verified, the archive says so and points you at the people who hold the real answer. The standard aimed for throughout is that of a good workshop manual: specific, sourced, and honest about uncertainty.
What this archive covers
The subject is ownership: identification, the engineering, what goes wrong, and what keeping one on the road actually involves. The depth is on the six-cylinder cars: Series 1, the interim cars usually called Series 1.5, and Series 2. Series 3 and the V12 appear factually where they belong in the story, without being built out. The roadster, the fixed-head coupe and the 2+2 are covered within each page rather than separately.
What this archive deliberately does not cover
There is nothing here about cars for sale, asking prices, what an E-Type is worth, market values, auction results or investment advice, and nothing about restomod or continuation builders. That ground is already held, thoroughly, by commercial sites whose pages rank first for those questions, and this archive concedes it on purpose. If you want to know what a particular car is worth, a specialist restorer, a marque valuer or an insurer with classic experience will serve you far better than a reference page could.
Recently updated
Picture frame source named
The printed catalogue used to confirm the picture frame part numbers has been identified as Martin Robey's own E-Type catalogue and is now named. That sharpens the C15014 question: the same Martin Robey code, MRE92, appears against C15014 in their printed catalogue and against C25368 on their website.
Picture frame part numbers confirmed
The picture frame article's part numbers have been checked against a printed parts catalogue rather than supplier listings alone. The Series 1 crossmember is C15014 and the Series 2 is C28922. Series 1.5 was previously grouped with Series 2 and belongs with Series 1. The catalogue also uses the term picture frame in its own descriptions, which the article had recorded as unseen in any parts documentation.
Brake and clutch reservoirs
A new technical article on why reproduction brake and clutch fluid reservoir bottles crack at the outlet: the missing internal reinforcement, the fuel hose mistake, the correct EPDM hose and the widely misread Cohline part number.
The picture frame
A new technical article on the sheet steel crossmember at the front of the E-Type frame assembly: what it carries, why jacking damages it, where the car number is stamped, and how the name is often misapplied to the bulkhead. The bonnet-fit article was also corrected: the bonnet hinges from the front of the frame assembly, not from the front bulkhead.