1968 Jaguar E-Type Turning Heads for 38 Years

GEORGE SWEEPER, who has nurtured his 1968 Jaguar E-Type for nearly 40 years, has come up with a new defense of the British brand’s reputation for poor reliability.There may have been many bad ones made,he concedes.I got one of the good ones.

Mr. Sweeper recalled a road trip that he and a friend made from New York to California in 1981.We drove 58 hours to Oakland,he said. We drove and drove and drove. We saw the sun come up. We saw the sun go down. We went to the bathroom at the same stops. We got on highway 80 and stayed on it.There were no breakdowns.A few years earlier, he had spent six weeks zigzagging across the country, covering 10,000 miles. The only thing that broke on the Jaguar was a fan belt, at the Grand Canyon. But I carried a spare, he said. Mr. Sweeper, who lives in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, says his Jaguar is pushing 185,000 miles. He enjoys driving. Briskly and far.