Strictly No Admittance : Lightweight E-type and the XK engine

This impressive, large format book tells the inside story of the ‘Lightweight’ E-types. Built just in 1963, they are now amongst the rarest and most desirable of the race cars which came from Jaguar’s famous Competition Department – to which indeed there was ‘Strictly No Admittance’ for ordinary mortals!

The book covers the evolution, design and development of Jaguar’s G.T. challenger and its XK racing engine. It is written by automotive engineer Peter Wilson who himself worked in the Competition Department throughout the period, where, together with his colleagues, helped build, and develop the production E-type through to its final form – the highly competitive and successful ‘Lightweight’ E-type. Peter’s remarkable recall of those events 60 or more years ago is reinforced by the hundreds of hours he spent in the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust’s impressive archives, and by many conversations with his former colleagues at Jaguar.

The result is a book of astonishing detail (every single engine ever used by the factory in Lightweight E-types is, for example, identified and fully documented), while Peter’s account of how the car evolved from previous models, and the technicalities of how the engine, transmissions, brakes and bodywork were built and developed, are recorded in unprecedented detail. “The Lightweight E-type was created under the aegis of Jaguar’s founder, Sir William Lyons, and his engineering director William Heynes CBE”, writes publisher Paul Skilleter. “But the cars needed to be built and maintained, and Peter takes us into that ‘holy of holies’ and introduces us to the men who created the Lightweight E-type ‘in the metal’. “However, in successfully persuading Peter Wilson to follow up his XJ13 book with one on the Lightweight E-type, I hadn’t realised what I had let myself in for… The sheer quantity of words, graphs, diagrams and pictures which Peter presented me with was breathtaking – as was also the huge depth of the research clearly involved, supporting Peter’s own vivid memories of events in the Competition Department over 60 years ago. “The best books on Jaguar, or perhaps on any topic, are surely the ones written by those who were part of those very same events. This is what sets Strictly No Admittance apart.” Twenty-one appendices include a detailed listing of every engine associated with the Lightweight, and a similar listing of all 12 Lightweights built (plus several ‘sub-lightweights’ built around the same time). Illustrations approach the 1,000 mark.