Malcolm Sayer

Malcolm Sayer (1916-1970) was a designer of Jaguar cars. He was one of the first engineers to apply principles of aerodynamics to car design. His designs include:

• Jaguar C-type (also called XK 120C, due to its being based on the Jaguar XK 120)
• Jaguar D-type
• Jaguar E-type
• Jaguar XJ13
• Jaguar XJS (although the car launched several years after Sayer's death)

Born in Cromer, Sayer was educated at Great Yarmouth Grammar School (where his father taught Maths and Art) and later at the then Loughborough College. He worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company during the Second World War, which exempted him from conscription by way of reserved occupation protection. Following the war he married Pat Morgan in 1947, then went to Iraq in 1948 after his daughter was born to work at Baghdad University which turned out to exist only on paper so he worked instead maintaining fleets of government vehicles.

Returning in 1950 he joined Jaguar in 1951. Some of his particular contributions were the introduction of slide rule and seven-figure log tables to work out formulae he invented for drawing curves, work which is now undertaken by complex Computer Aided Design software.

His son was born in 1953 and another daughter in 1956.

Apart from design skill was also very good musician and played piano and guitar and other sundry instruments