How We (Sort Of) Brought Our 1969 Jaguar E-Type From Dusseldorf To Manhattan

Story by Thomas Gerwers
Photography by Petra Sagnak

In the summer of ’69, 55-year-old Stuart Marshall B. buys a new Series 2 Jaguar E-Type for $6,900 from the dealership near New York City. Over the next ten years, he uses the car to travel from his home on the Long Island Sound to his office in Manhattan’s financial district, first as a daily occurrence, and then less often as the car starts to become a more valued member of the family, his two sons developing a particular fondness for the big cat. British Racing Green with tan leather inside and a straight-six in front of you is a siren’s combination.

In the summer of ’79, urologist Jeffrey Glasser pores over the classifieds in the New York Times. He is looking for a car, his first in fact. Among the columns is an ad for a Jaguar E-Type, BRG over tan. It’s ten years old at this point, and the price is listed at $6,900. The young doctor buys the car, and it will remain in his name for the next 20 years. It’s typically used on weekends, shuttling up and down the coast to Martha’s Vineyard with his wife Kathy next to him at first, and later with their son in the backseat.

After countless repairs and two decades of time, the cat is getting a bit rusty in its Long Island garage near the salt water, and as it becomes increasingly unreliable the trips become less frequent and the feedback loop engages. The early summers filled with fascination for the E-Type have given way to frustration in the face of increasing decay.

The car is then listen on eBay, and it is loaded up for a life in the Midwest United States where it ostensibly lives for the next decade before reappearing for sale all the way across the Atlantic in the Netherlands. It is no longer wearing its handsome British hue on the exterior, but inside the pink (!) bodywork the tan leather survived. This is when Petra Sagnak and I became the owners of this particular E-Type.

It’s been restored to its original condition since then, and though the original owner has passed away, we found Jeffrey and Kathy Glasser and got in touch. They had so many photos and memories from the past of the car on the streets of Manhattan, and it becomes clear that a meeting should be arranged. Petra Sagnak and I, both photographers and journalists, flew to New York City, and packed in our luggage this model E-Type, painted British Racing Green of course! It was a bit more complicated and a lot more expensive to fly the real car back to its home town, but we thought this model could stand in on its behalf on the streets of the Big Apple, where our car grew up for the first 30 years of its long and inspiring life.