It was pure lust on wheels. Jaguar’s voluptuous E-type had car enthusiasts’ tongues hanging down to their knees when it was introduced. And to this day the car commands head-spinning attention whenever it makes the scene.
First conceived in 1956, the E-Type was originally intended as a replacement for the Coventry, England firm’s mighty D-Type endurance racers. Jaguar quit racing shortly after the E-Type’s development began, but work on the car continued nonetheless, culminating in a production roadgoing version introduced at the Geneva Motor Show in March, 1961. Offered as a two-seat coupe or convertible, it was an immediate hit.
The Lamborghini Miura was the world’s first true mass-production, mid-engine super car when it was introduced for 1966. It was a striking blend, offering the styling and mechanical configuration of the era’s wildest, all-out endurance-racing machines, all rolled into a package that was reasonably streetable.
But for all the Miura’s obvious race-car underpinnings, Lamborghini never fielded a competition version of the car. Of course, it wasn’t that the idea of putting its pioneering exotic on the track hadn’t occurred to anyone. Plenty of people within the company hoped they’d eventually be called on to prepare a Miura for such use.
Ever since Ford introduced its stunning GT40 race car in the mid 1960s, it’s been one of the world’s most coveted performance cars. For decades, people have been attempting replicas of wildly varying credibility. And today, real GT40s sell for anywhere from about $300,000 for a typical example, to the $2.5-million recently paid for a GT40 prototype.
Given that, it’s not surprising that Ford jumped back into the mid-engine super car game, offering its GT40 successor, the GT, for 2005. This new version is by far the wildest, fastest mass-production car ever offered by Ford.
It was a classic story of a promising car that didn’t have a chance to really prove itself. And from it was born one of the more significant legends of Corvette history.
The Corvette SS began in 1956 as a pet project of General Motors’ styling director Harley Earl, who wanted Chevrolet to take on the big names in international endurance racing. Earl’s initial idea was to design a racy body, drop it onto a Jaguar D-Type chassis, and swap the Jag’s six for a Chevy V8.