Jaguar World Magazine Super-saloon buyer’s guide Jan09 Edizione posteriore

As I write these words it’s 8.30am on a
Friday morning in late November, and
it’s a morning that can best be described
as filthy in terms of the weather outside.
By the time I arrived at the office the sun had
barely made an appearance, the rain that was falling
when I started my journey hadn’t stopped, and the
country lanes that make up the last few miles to the
office were slick with mud and leaves. Classic driving
conditions they were not. Or were they?
On an almost identical morning at the beginning
of the month and for reasons that I won’t bore
you with, for the same journey I was behind the
wheel of a rather agricultural modern pick-up, a
pick-up that provided a driving experience about as
far removed from classic Jaguar motoring as was
possible. Yet, as the rain fell and mud got caked
up the side of it in ever-increasing layers, I couldn’t
help but feel I was in a vehicle well suited to the
conditions. It was only on having made it to the
office and then read the story about the ‘Jenks’
E-type (see pages 37-40), that I felt rather daft.
For those of you that don’t know, Denis ‘Jenks’
Jenkinson was the famed Motor Sport journalist who
enjoyed getting involved in motor sport as much
as he enjoyed writing about it (and if you haven’t
read his account of winning the 1955 Mille Miglia
alongside Stirling Moss, you really should…). In the
course of his work Jenks regularly clocked up huge
mileages in Europe through blatting from one Grand
Prix or Sports Car race to another during a season.
And in the mid 1960s his car of choice was an
E-type 4.2 fixed-head.