The prettiest car of all time is........

A Jaguar XK-E roadster (the coupe looks almost as good). (Photo by BobbaLew.)

How can anyone resist a lede like that?
Just like the time at the Mighty Mezz when I said “the greatest rock-n-roll song of all time is....” and the entire newsroom went suddenly silent. You could hear a pin drop.
The greatest rock-n-roll song of all time is not “I can’t get no satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. It’s “Louie-lew-EYE” by the Kingsmen, a cover.
As soon as I said that everyone rose to their feet, and a torrent of noisy cat-calls and put-downs began, and questioning my intelligence and knowledge of the topic.
Most were suggesting songs from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Poor babies! They weren’t even thought of in the ‘50s when rock-n-roll began.
The prettiest car of all time is of course the Jaguar XK-E.
I used to say the prettiest car of all time was the 1953 Studebaker Starliner hardtop.


A ’53 Starliner coupe (the hardtop looks prettier). (Photo by BobbaLew.)

My macho brother-in-Boston loudly declared “Are you crazy?”
Well, he had a point, but I usually take his blustering with a grain of salt.
A guy I worked with at the Mighty Mezz, a car-guy like me, took issue with the Studebaker.
“The prettiest car of all time is the Jaguar XK-E,” he said.
I thought about it, and I agree.
But compare the Studebaker to everything else marketed at that time. GM’s products were bloated turkeys, as were the Chrysler products.
Ford’s offerings looked better, but they weren’t Studebaker. Even mighty Packard was a BeetleBomb.
The Starliner was a showcar, a one-off brought into production. It was styled by Raymond Loewy, perhaps the best industrial-designer in the world at that time.
The Starliner has no borrowed styling cues.
It stands alone, and is striking.
No wrap-around windshield, no faux fenders or faux running-boards. It still looks pretty good. To me, it’s better than Loewy’s Avanti.
But the Starliner has problems. I saw one at a car-show in Watkins Glen (the one pictured).
It’s big, and very definitely a 1953 car. It reminded me of a ’53 Chevy, perhaps the worst turkey ever.
It also lacks a good motor. It needs a SmallBlock Chevy. If yer gonna swap the motor, ya might as well put that SmallBlock in a ’41 Willys three-window coupe, one of the best hotrods of all time.
The Stud is nice, but it’s big and blowzy.
It looks 1953.
The XK-E, by comparison, is tiny. It’s also much more sophisticated; it has independent rear-suspension and disc brakes.
Another example of getting it right. Loewy got it right with the Starliner, but it ain’t the Jag.
The XK-E has problems too.
Its inline-six motor was flaky.
How many of those motors were swapped out for something better?
I remember Car and Driver magazine installing a Pontiac overhead-cam inline six.
But the prettiest car of all time is indeed the XK-E Jag.

• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)