Have you ever heard of the Jaguar E-Type?

No?

This is it:

By the Holy Virgin, that is… I mean… just…

Words fail. That’s enough to give any red-blooded petrolhead (“gearhead” to you Americans) an immediate semi. That thing is just the business.

It is, quite simply, one of the most spectacularly beautiful cars ever made.

Just one problem with it…

It’s British-made. From back in the days when Britain was even worse at making cars than Americans were, mostly because their entire car industry was run by Communists and trade-unionists. (Lord, forgive us our redundancies.)

As a result, it didn’t really work very well, as Jezza so ably demonstrated when TOP GEAR did a 50th-Anniversary birthday special for this most brilliant-looking car.

As Jezza also pointed out in that special, there are ways and means by which that car, which basically amounts to the automotive version of, oh, say, Mizuho Lin- exotic looks, great voice– into something even more spectacular.

The result is the E-Type Speedster, and if there were a way to rank cars by looks the way we rank supermodels, I’m certain that it would be ranked above the Adriana-Lima-on-wheels that is the Ferrari F458.

Top: What the Jag E-Type Speedster looks like. Bottom: What the Ferrari F-458 looks like.

Honestly, it is quite difficult for me to figure out which of those two looks better; there is not enough blood being supplied to either brain to make a rational decision one way or another. It’s even a coin-toss as to which has the more impressive bumpers.

Er… where was I? Oh, right.

It is also possible to get a little carried away with this, as one small Swiss company discovered when they decided that they would get in on the act of creating tricked-out Jag E-Types- and would name them the “Growler”:

I have to confess, I’ve lived in the UK and I never knew that “growler” was, in fact, slang for a lady’s… er… beard. Until now.

But you know what the worst part is?

In American pubs, you can actually order growlers. They are half-gallon jugs of beer. (You have no idea how difficult it is to type this while suffering from severe laughter spasms.) There are pubs that call themselves “The Growler”- there is one not far from where I live, in fact.

There is no way in hell that I will ever be able to step into such an establishment again. TOP GEAR have just ruined pub-crawls for me forever. I simply cannot see myself walking into a pub that has “growler” in its name ever again.

I mean, can you imagine standing next to some chap in such a place, after watching that, and listening to him telling the bartender, “Growlers for all of my buddies here! And make sure that the head on them is nice and fluffy!!!”