The Missing Six. Sounds like something out of the Enid Blyton collection, but it is in fact the romantic tale of half-a-dozen (or so) forgotten E-type Lightweight ‘Special GTs’. Cars that should have enjoyed their moment in the sun six decades ago, racing proudly in the hands of wealthy privateers, turning heads on rivieras, testing their engineering limitations at Le Mans and making road-racing around the continent seem commonplace. But they didn’t.

The first of Jaguar’s E-type Lightweights certainly enjoyed that lifestyle, but the final third remained just a collection of chassis numbers buried in the company’s vaults, until 2014.

To get to the point of their rebirth, let’s rewind to the early 1960s. Jaguar’s E-type was in full flow. Britain’s answer to the sporting coupés of Europe stood strong against the might of Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche and more, offering equal or better performance for less money, plus striking looks that led even Enzo Ferrari himself to proclaim the E-type as “the most beautiful car ever made”. Quite something coming from the creator of some of the greatest sports machines in history.

However, while all that worked wonders on the road, with Jaguar shifting over 33,000 Series 1 E-types, on the track it was a different story. While Ferrari and co. were more than happy to churn out dedicated road-racers, developed with the track in mind and then honed to work on the road if truly necessary, Jaguar did things the other way around. As opposed to its racing-bred forebears, the C- and D-types, the E- was a road car first and foremost, made to dominate salesrooms and boost Jaguar’s coffers. That led to the grim and ugly truth that, while there was some early success for the E-type on the circuits, it was never a match for its Italian rivals when it truly mattered on the prestige events.

“The Ferraris were faster, lighter and more nimble. Jaguar needed a rethink to get anywhere near”

Look at Le Mans in 1962. Jaguar sent three E-types, a factory assisted effort for Briggs Cunningham, plus two for private entries – Peter Sargent and Maurice Charles. While it’s true that two of those finished – and in a respectable fourth and fifth – they could do nothing against the might of the Ferraris as a works 330LM crushed the field, followed by a brace of 250 GTOs. The leading Jaguar was over 20 laps down at the finish. The Ferraris were lighter, faster and more nimble, and Jaguar knew it needed a rethink if it was going to get anywhere near the red cars.

It all began with a vision from Jaguar aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer, who took a standard E-, stripped it of its steel bodywork and instead fitted lighter aluminium panels, which were bonded or riveted on to save the weight of welds, re-profiled the windscreen and tail and replaced the windows with Plexiglass. This new Low-Drag Coupé immediately brought a performance boost when it was first tested in 1962 and convinced Jaguar to commission a new run of heavily modified E-types for 1963 called the Lightweight Special GT.

Jaguar created an aluminium-blocked variant of its 3.8-litre XK straight-six engine, lowering the unit’s weight significantly, and customers could choose from either Lucas fuel injection or triple Weber carbs to produce around 300bhp.

All creature comforts were stripped from the interior, and all glass but the windscreen became plastic. That, plus the new aluminium bodywork meant the Lightweight E- tipped the scales at just 960kg.

“In truth, the quality of the Continuation Lightweights far outstrips that of the originals”

Originally 18 chassis numbers were set aside. But in reality only 12 were actually constructed between 1963-64, at which point Jaguar essentially stopped the programme after mixed success – the Lightweights ran well at Le Mans in ’63, but an accident, gearbox implosion and a snapped brake pedal did for the three Cunningham cars – to focus on further development of the road car. That left six chassis outstanding, until Jaguar Classic – a new division of the firm’s Special Vehicle Operations arm – was founded and set about finishing the job.

The Lightweight Continuation run stretched to the six missing cars, plus a ‘Car 0’, which was the first built and intended to be used for promotional purposes. So, seven chassis in total were built to exacting standards at Jaguar’s Whitley Plant, before the cars were taken to Browns Lane to be finished off, just as their ancestors were.

In truth, the quality of the Continuation E-types far outstrips the originals. As well as using original blueprints, Jaguar laser-scanned every element of chassis 12 from the original Lightweight batch to replicate every rivet, bond and surface, recreating the findings exactly and then flipping the scan over to make a perfectly matched finished product. It was impossible to be that precise in period.

The alloy engine, now from famed builder Crosthwaite & Gardiner, was mated to a four-speed gearbox, Powr-Lok limited-slip differential, double-wishbone front suspension and independent wide wishbones at the rear, as in period. The package was finished by a set of Dunlop crossplys and full FIA historic paperwork.

At launch, one of the ‘new’ Lightweights would have set you back a cool £1m. While that’s significantly less than one of the true originals (worth between £4m-£7m) these cars are now starting to appreciate. Car 0 sold for $1.7m (£1.3m) at auction with RM Sotheby’s in January 2020.