Since 1997, owners of 1950s Jaguar XK series have enjoyed membership in an international club that now boasts 1,200 members. Now the time has arrived for owners of Jaguar E-types to enjoy their own club, the E-type Club (its web site is located at www.e-typeclub.com).

One of the services of the E-type Club is The E-type, a four-color monthly magazine that roves the world looking for notable interviewees, archival material, anecdotes and photographs to publish.

The E-type’s U.S. correspondent, Richard Brown, lives in Santa Rosa and is a BEM customer. Richard recently reported on Roger Hoffman (also a BEM client), a Cobra fan who recently purchased his first E-type (below). Somehow Richard was able to persuade Roger not only to drive his E-type, but his Cobra as well, and then compare the drives.

Richard reported that if a regular E-type was a knife, then Roger’s modified car was “a surgeon’s scalpel – quick, precise, smooth.” The Cobra, he said, was almost the opposite, “a sledgehammer – quick, imprecise, rough and unsophisticated.”