Jaguar Aero Lightweight

E-type 3.8 liter

My old steel-tub replica of the original Lindner-Nocker aerodynamic lightweight (rebodied by Malcom Sayer). In 1963, Jaguar borrowed John Combs' GTO and compared it with the Jag in the MIRA full-scale wind tunnel.

I purchased the car from Simon Dunford who runs Dunford Cars. When Lynx Cars went into bankruptcy (from which they emerged), Dunford hired many of their fabricators and began to produce the Linder-Nocker replicas just as Lynx had. This was Simon Dunford's personal car, their demonstrator and the car used in their advertisements.

These first five photos were taken in England in Dunford's shop. The dry sump oil tank in the photo's foreground (left side engine compartment) is not operational as the engine was a wet-sump, but it was the correct tank. The car was awfully close, with magnesium wheels, and the bodywork rivets matching the original's, rivet for rivet.

This was a very comfortable car to drive and I took it on a 500-mile round trip from Phoenix to Bisbee, Arizona. I parked it outside the hotel and it hailed, fortunately not hard enough to create a million little dents. I reached over 140 mph on the highway from Bisbee to Sierre Vista ,crossing the San Pedro river, but the uneven road surface and my old-style bias belted racing tires let the car move around at speed. The 3.8 litre motor revved higher than the 4.2 but didn't have the torque.

The original also had this line of rivets on both sides of the bodywork. The underside was pretty clean and the entire car was beautifully done, though with the inevitable sorting problems. We got this car sorted out.

This photo shows the sharp drop off of the Jag's tail area which Brock felt was excessive -- it would cause airflow separation. This is why cars like the Cobra coupe and Ferrari LM chopped off their tail -- the Kamm tail. There is a great photo of the original Lindner-Nocker aerodynamic lightweight on page 174 of the book.