OWNER’S STORY
With just two owners from new this 1969 E-Type Series 2 is on the market for the first time in 48 years
WHEN THE bought this E-Type Series 2 open-two-seater, Harold Wilson was half way through his second premiership, Rod Stewart was at the top of the hit parade with Sailing, Jensen Motors had just entered receivership and the Ford Cortina was the UK’s best-selling car. In other words, a long time ago.
“Why keep it for so long?” he says when I ask him the same question. “150mph, 20mpg (not bad then!), an airline style of cockpit and all wrapped up in what Enzo Ferrari once called, ‘The most beautiful car in the world’. So why wouldn’t you?”
The car – chassis number 1R1284 in Old English White with a black interior – originally left Jaguar’s Browns Lane assembly line during late 1969, 12 months after the E-Type Series 2 had first been introduced. Registered VRX186H in October the same year, the first owner was a Mr A G Butler from Henley-on-Thames.
Apparently Mr Butler used the car mainly for driving to Scotland and back meaning by September 1971 the mileometer in the speedo was reading a little under 29,000 miles and was up to 60,000 just four years later.
When Mr Butler sold the white E-Type in mid 1975 to a dealer, he would later come to regret it. “He loved the car,” the man who eventually bought it tells me. “He later asked if he could buy it back but I replied (very nicely) that a ‘buy back’ option was not on the table.”
By then the E-Type had been superseded by the XJ-S and the XK-engined models especially were starting to be considered as old-fashioned by some yet it was a car the current owner had always desired.
“My father had one of the last Jaguar XK150 3.8S convertibles and I had previously owned several sports cars including an Austin Healey 3000 and Triumph TR3,” he tells me. “But I’d always wanted the rakishly beautiful and very fast E-Type ever since it had come out.”
His time finally arrived in the autumn of 1975 when the recent fuel crisis had forced down prices of sports cars and the white E-Type Series 2 was now affordable. “I paid £1400 for it!” he says gleefully. Considering an entry-level Ford Cortina 1300 twodoor was around the same price, it made the Jaguar fantastic value for money.
When the second owner bought the E-Type he kept a diary about the car and his first entry on 19 September, 1975, a week before collected it from the dealer describes a conversation with Mr Butler. His notes give a fascinating snapshot of the condition of a by now six-year-old Jaguar E-Type.
“Call to original owner re car’s history,” he writes. “Regularly serviced. Paintwork absolutely original. Mileage absolutely genuine. One
