The Low Drag Coupe

What it was

A single closed competition E-Type built by Jaguar with a reprofiled roof and a fastback tail, prepared for the 1962 racing season, before the factory effort moved to the all aluminium Lightweight programme. Chassis EC1001. The design is attributed to Malcolm Sayer, and the Sayer estate records that he retained the original tub with lighter outer panels riveted and glued to it.

The archive has to note something uncomfortable here. The Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust's own public material on E-Type evolution covers E1A, E2A, 77 RW and the production series, and does not mention the Low Drag Coupe at all. That is an absence rather than a contradiction, but it means everything on this page comes from specialists and secondary sources rather than from the factory.

The registration trap

This is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone reading a description or an auction catalogue. The registration CUT 7 was carried by two different cars.

Chassis 860004, the fourth right hand drive fixed head coupe Jaguar built, dispatched in September 1961 and delivered to Dick Protheroe, originally carried CUT 7. xkedata states plainly that it is not a low drag or lightweight variant but a standard competition modified coupe, and that the Low Drag car, EC1001, was a separate car Protheroe acquired later.

The consequence is that period results attributed to CUT 7 may belong to either car. Protheroe's 1962 Autosport championship class win and his sixth place at the Goodwood Tourist Trophy are attributed by xkedata to 860004, not to EC1001. Any description that hangs 1962 CUT 7 results on the Low Drag Coupe should be checked against the date.

The aerodynamic claims

Two incompatible figures circulate. Eagle states that wind tunnel testing showed the body more aerodynamically efficient than a Ferrari 250 GTO by 10 per cent and than the standard E-Type by 20 per cent. A dealer page quoting Sayer directly gives a different figure for a different car, that in the wind tunnel the Lindner car had 84 per cent of the drag of a standard E-Type, which is a 16 per cent reduction.

Neither figure has been traced to a wind tunnel report, a Sayer working paper or any factory document. Note also that the Eagle figures appear verbatim in a modern classified feature about a car being offered for sale, which is to say the claim has migrated from the original car to a car with a price on it. The archive records the figures and does not endorse them.

How to tell it from a recreation

There is no factory continuation of this car, but there are several independent recreations and one modern reinterpretation. Four things separate them.

• The chassis number is decisive. The original is EC1001. Every recreation traced carries an ordinary production E-Type chassis number, for instance the Lynx car sold at auction in 2014 on donor chassis 860416.
• Construction. The original is a steel shell with aluminium bonnet and doors. Recreations are commonly all aluminium. An all aluminium low drag coupe is, on that basis alone, not EC1001.
• Treat any lot titled as a Lightweight Low Drag Competition Coupe carrying a six digit production chassis number as a recreation or a converted production car until it is proved otherwise. The Lightweight chassis series is a short and known list, and a number outside it is not a Lightweight.
• Eagle's Low Drag GT is not a replica and does not claim to be. It is a modern car with a 4.7 litre aluminium engine, carbon fibre and modern suspension, inspired by EC1001. Descriptions that place it in a lineage of low drag E-Types without saying so are misleading by omission.

The number of recreations is itself contested. One auction description calls a Lynx car one of five recreations of the Lindner body, while a magazine describes the Lynx remake of the 1962 prototype shape as believed to exist in only two examples. Those may be two different Lynx products or they may simply disagree, and the archive has not resolved it.

What happened to it

The chain generally given is Dick Protheroe, who registered it CUT 7 and raced it in 1963 and 1964, then David Wansborough from 1965, then several changes of ownership, then Viscount Cowdray. The car survives, and a restoration shop reported having it in around 2014 stripped down and being prepared for fresh paint. The archive does not pursue current ownership.