The Jaguar the mafia couldn’t kill

Dan Trent writes:
There must be so much valuable knowledge crowded out of my brain by useless intel stored in there about cars. That’s the only explanation for the little alarm bell that went off in my head when I saw this red E-Type Jaguar at a ‘bring your own car day’ organised by the grand sounding Guild Of Motoring Writers at the weekend. I should have known my Clio wasn’t really going to cut it. But I gave it a scrub up and took it along anyway.

But what about that Jag? Well, as it happened I’d just days before been reading up on The Italian Job. And as soon as I saw the red E-Type I thought "that numberplate looks familiar…" and, sure enough, it turns out this is one of the three fast cars intercepted by the mafia as Michael Caine’s gang heads over the alps to Turin. The black E-Type coupe gets its roof stoved in. The Aston Martin DB4 Volante – "Yours? Pretty car…" – gets chucked over a cliff. Relatively speaking the red Jag gets off lightly, a mashed bonnet and broken windscreen the extent of the damage.

And this is the car! The owner of 30-odd years was only too happy to discuss the car’s fabulous history – it raced before appearing in the film – and he reckons it’s probably one of the only known survivors from the film. Suffice to say, I had to fire up the DVD when I got home. Any excuse!

There were some very cool cars around too and a diverse range of stuff. Like this Ferrari 355 parked alongside VW PR boss Paul Buckett’s 80-year-old Rolls Royce.