Beschreibung:

Bonhams & Butterfields is thrilled to offer here one of the most significant surviving major-motor industry prototype cars ever to come to public auction. This unique and celebrated prototype Jaguar ‘E2A’ - as driven by no fewer than four of the world’s greatest racing drivers, Dan Gurney, Sir Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren and Walt Hansgen – is offered here direct from one long-term family ownership which has not only endured for the past 40 years, but which is also the car’s first ownership ex-works. Jaguar E2A is offered here in wonderfully original and unspoiled ex-works condition, as last repainted and prepared cosmetically for sale to its private enthusiast owners. By 1960 Jaguar had won the world’s most prestigious motor race, the Le Mans 24-Hours, no fewer than five times; twice with its original competition-tailored C-Type and three times with the tail-finned D-Type. At that juncture, company head Sir William Lyons had decreed that it was time for this phenomenal sporting pedigree to benefit production with an all-new semi-monocoque chassised design which was to emerge in 1961 as the now legendary Jaguar E-Type. One prototype for this model – the ‘missing link’ between D-Type and E-Type – emerged as ‘E2A’, a powerful fuel-injected 3-liter sports-racing two-seater that was to be raced by famous American sportsman Briggs Cunningham’s experienced team at Le Mans in 1960. The new ‘E2A’ was to test several features of the forthcoming E-Type production model, not least its independent rear suspension system in place of the live-axle featured in both the C-Type and D-Type designs. Visually the new car’s contemporarily tail-finned rear bodywork recalled the charismatic D-Type, while its handsomely proportioned one-piece forward bodywork presaged the lovely lines of the forthcoming E-Type. The Jaguar experimental department at Brown’s Lane, Coventry, completed the car in February 1960, powered by an aluminum-block fuel-injected 3-liter 6-cylinder engine. It was subsequently finished for the Cunningham team in their famous American racing colors, white overall with two parallel centerline stripes in dark blue. In the 1960 Le Mans 24-Hours, that June, Cunningham entrusted this unique beauty to the incredibly strong driver pairing of the contemporary BRM Formula 1 team’s ex-Ferrari star Dan Gurney and veteran multiple SCCA Champion Walt Hansgen. Dan Gurney – today revered as one of the most charismatic of all America’s great racing drivers and as creator of the enduring All-American Racers Eagle operation – recalled of E2A: “The drive in that Jaguar was a big pearl for me. And it was a privilege to be sharing it with Walt Hansgen, one of my heroes. But we’d had some difficulty with the car’s handling. It was new, this was its first race, and the Jaguar engineers running it regarded Le Mans as their specialty. “But at first that car had been difficult to drive just down the straightaway. The least disturbance would send it into a series of tank slappers. My co-driver Walter Hansgen was such a faithful Jaguar man he didn’t criticize, but I guess I was only interested in trying to win. I felt that if we left the car the way it was and it rained, we’d be in real trouble. “So I made myself unpopular by tenaciously asking ‘Can’t we find why it is doing this?’ with Walter standing quietly like it didn’t bother him. Through my constant questioning we finally found that they’d set up the car at the MIRA test ground with a fair amount of toe-out on the rear wheels. If the car leaned just a little, one way or the other, it was leaning on a wheel which would direct the tail in a different direction. We got them to change it, and it became a normal, good handling car…”. Dan Gurney and Walt Hansgen got along really well and as recorded in the wonderful biography Walt Hansgen, by Michael Argetsinger (David Bull Publishing, 2007) Walt himself noted: “After talking it over with Mr Heynes and Tom Jones” – Bill Heynes being Jaguar’s chief engineer and