Malcolm Sayer was born in Cromer in Norfolk in 1916, won an Empire Scholarship at 17 and took first-class honours in aeronautical and automotive engineering at Loughborough College. During the Second World War he worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company, and in 1948 went to Baghdad University to found an engineering faculty, but found it was not a realistic venture and returned to Britain in 1950.
He joined Jaguar in early 1951, describing himself as an aerodynamicist: he “loathed” the word stylist, being “an aerodynamicist, not a hairdresser”. His first sports-racer, the C-type, won Le Mans in 1951 and 1953. The D-type, developed with wind-tunnel models at Loughborough and full-size tests at RAE Farnborough, won Le Mans in 1955, 1956 and 1957 and could reach 192 mph on the Mulsanne Straight.
Sayer drew up the overall form of the E-type, launched at Geneva in March 1961, with Lyons overseeing the detailing and engineer Bill Heynes the body engineering. He also designed the mid-engined XJ13 in 1965 and made the first style proposals for the XJ-S. He introduced slide rules and seven-figure logarithm tables to work out formulae for drawing curves, work now done by computer-aided design. He died suddenly in Leamington Spa in 1970, a month before his 54th birthday.
