HISTORY
When Darren and Lucy Arnold bought an early E-type 20 years ago, they didn’t know the car had a fascinating motorsport pedigree. We investigate the newly restored car’s past
NOTKNOWING anything is the sweetest life,” wrote the Ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles. I’m sure my maths teacher would disagree with that statement as would Lucy and Darren. Despite owning their early E-type for over two decades, it’s only recently they’ve discovered it has a motorsport history, taking part in the 1964 Malaysian Grand Prix amongst many others.
The car – afixed head coupe with chassis number 860190 in Opalescent Gunmetal Grey – was built on 26 January, 1962 which makes it one of the first right-hand drive examples to have the internal bonnet locks that had arrived the previous winter.
Registered 308 WK on 14 March, it was bought directly from Jaguar by a former British army captain, John Walker Wright, who was living in Federation of Malaya (known as Malaysia from 1963). Something of a genuine war hero, he was awarded an MC for courage and leadership at the Battle of Kohima that took part in northeast India between April and June 1944.
Born in Paignton, Devon on April 12, 1922, Wright was educated at St Paul’s before going to Cambridge University in 1940 to read engineering, signing up to join the army six months later.
After being demobilised in 1946, he returned to Cambridge to finish his degree before heading to Malaya to join its Public Works Department as an engineer. He moved to the World Bank 14 years later which would see him travel extensively across Asia. Wright retired to a Gloucester village in 1991, living in a house he’d built himself.
After passing away in June 2002, according to his obituary in The Telegraph, he was often seen driving his elderly Volvo at high speed, often in the middle of the road. “The roof of his convertible model having broken (in the down position), Wright could be seen driving on rainy days with an umbrella at his side which he would erect in heavy traffic, blithely indifferent to the astonishment of other drivers.”
But in his younger days, Wright had been a keen amateur racer and while still in Malaya first competed across the region with a Ford Zephyr which was replaced in 1962 by the E-type.
With Wright always planning to race the car, he had the axle ratio and a wide angle cylinder head with twin DC03 Webers from a D-type fitted, several aluminium panels plus other modifications. The car was finally delivered to Wright via Jaguar’s distributor in Singapore, Cycle & Carrier, when it was locally registered JC7.
Over the next couple of seasons Wright became a familiar sight at Malayan races when by being occasionally erratic but always fast, he would often finish well. These included second
