Legend has it that when the Jaguar E-Type was launched in 1961, Enzo Ferrari said he considered it to be “the most beautiful motor car in the world”. On a recently beautiful, sunny day a plethora of stunning E-Types descended on Ellenborough Park Hotel in Cheltenham for the launch of the 2018 Round Britain Coastal Drive.

This group included “9600 HP” which was the original Geneva Auto Salon launch car (the one Enzo Ferrari may have commented on) and it was also the road test car which set the magic 150mph; a speed often quoted as a major landmark in road car history.

A 3,400-mile circumferential route

The 18-day coastal drive, now in its third consecutive annual running, is organised by the E-type Club and over the last three years has raised a substantial amount of much appreciated funding for the charity Prostate Cancer UK, one of the most common cancers to impact men across the world.

This year’s 3,400-mile circum-ferential route around the British mainland will start at the iconic Pendine Sands on the south of Carmarthen Bay, Wales, on 17th September; the Sands are famous for Malcolm Campbell’s world land speed record on 25th September 1924, which took his Sunbeam 350HP car “Blue Bird” to 146.16mph.

The event will then conclude in Tenby, on the north-west of Carmarthen Bay, on 5th October. The Coastal Drive comprises 19 individual legs, each of approximately 180 miles distance – with stage 7 reaching John O’Groats and stage 17 Land’s End – and is driven sequentially by groups of E-types in the style of a relay.

Speaking with the event originator and E-type club founder, Philip Porter, he has been pleased with the success of the event: “When we first created the Round Britain Coastal Drive in 2016, with the aims of giving E-type Club owners all over the country a sociable driving event at the same time as raising funds for Prostate Cancer UK, it was intended to be a one-off.

The event has already raised over £130,000

But the event proved so enjoyable and so popular that here we are launching it for a third time. Thanks to the magnificent generosity of Coastal Drive participants and their friends, we have already raised more than £130,000 for Prostate Cancer UK and look forward to increasing that sum this year.”

New figures reveal that Prostate Cancer has now overtaken Breast Cancer to become the third most common cause of Cancer death in the UK. Prostate Cancer UK estimates that £120 million is needed for research over the next eight years to halve the number of prostate cancer deaths expected by 2026.

The charity’s chief executive, Angela Culhane, said: “We haven’t yet seen the big game-changing advances that Breast Cancer has had in terms of screening and precision medicine developments. We need to bust the myth that this is just an old man’s disease that isn’t significant.”