The Jaguar F-Type is no E-Type

In 1951, Arthur Drexler, an influential curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, organised an exhibition called 8 Automobiles. Drexler, who used to wear a bow tie, was one of the people who helped make ‘design’ the credible subject it is today.

The press release said it was the ‘first exhibition anywhere of automobiles selected for design’ — as, indeed, it was. Eight fine cars were presented on a dramatic fake roadway with huge photographic enlargements of details as a backdrop.

Drexler’s boss at the museum, the architect and one-time Nazi sympathiser Philip Johnson — and in those days New York’s arbiter elegantiarum — explained, ‘Automobiles are hollow, rolling sculpture, and the refinements of their design are fascinating.’ Quite so.

Ten years later, the Jaguar E-Type was launched at a lavish event in the Parc des Eaux Vives, a spiffy restaurant on the shores of Lake Geneva. International correspondents were astonished by the car’s combination of lascivious (some thought flagrantly erotic) looks, category-bending performance and accessible pricing.