Bruce McLaren 1961 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 Roadster OBL

The Jaguar E-type was first unveiled to the World at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show, and caused such a sensation that customers were literally queuing at Jaguar Showrooms to acquire one. By combining Malcolm Sayers super cool aerodynamic design with Sir William Lyon’s intuitive styling, it was one of the most beautiful sports cars of the swinging 60s. It mixed high technology, beautiful styling and refined high performance. Early production cars were extremely difficult to obtain unless you were fortunate enough to be considered a person of special interest to Jaguar and their partners. Bruce McLaren was a young and extremely talented Formula One driver from New Zealand. In March 1961, McLaren was just 23 years old, living in the United Kingdom and driving in Formula One for the Cooper Factory Team alongside Australian Jack Brabham. McLaren had already become the youngest ever driver to win a Formula One race at the United States Grand Prix in 1959. These special attributes were enough for Bruce to be chosen to receive one of the very first Jaguar E-Type Roadsters produced. That car was Chassis 15, the car you see here today. One of the first batch of 18 ‘priority list’ hand built cars, of which 7 were road cars built to race specification. Chassis 15 was originally supplied to Bruce McLaren by the well-known Jaguar dealer Coombs of Guildford. Bruce can be seen driving chassis 15 in the paddock during the 1961 TT meeting at Goodwood in the recently released film about his extraordinary life. His legacy continues to this day with the McLaren Formula One Team and McLaren Cars of Woking. ‘McLaren Automotive’ was founded in 1963. Acquired in 2016 from long term ownership in Australia, Chassis 15 was the subject of 4500 hour concours restoration to complete factory original specification.