1968 Jaguar E Type S2 2+2

“ A rare find, as a UK un-restored car, it offers huge potential for its next owner to bring it back to its former glory. ”
This one’s originality means that you get to choose the sort of restoration project that works for you – anything from full to partial to none whatsoever.

Background
Inevitably in everyone’s top three of the best-looking cars ever made (and for Enzo Ferrari it famously took the number one spot), the Jaguar E Type boasts inch-perfect lines, some of the best engines in the business and about half a mile of quite suggestive (in a Freudian way) bonnet.

The car was first launched in 1961, just 16 years after the end of the war. So, young men (and women) who’d dreamed of flying Spitfires when they were children in 1945 were almost guaranteed to fall head over heels for a car that looked like a fighter plane from the outside and had a cockpit and dashboard that would have made any handlebar-moustachioed RAF pilot feel right at home.

Their fathers would have been bank managers or family doctors, worn tweed and brogues, smoked a briar pipe, and driven an Alvis or a Riley.

But this next generation were architects, advertising execs or designers, wore slip-ons and turtle-necks, smoked Rothmans filter tipped and, if they were very lucky, drove an E Type.

It’s hard to believe, but in March 2031 the Jaguar E Type will be 70 years old.

Offered initially with the gorgeous 3.8-litre straight-six engine that developed a heady 265bhp, the Jaguar was a democratic car for all its potent sexual symbolism and mouth-watering performance.

Its list price was £2096 for the coupé - the equivalent of just over £30,000 in today’s money - which even its detractors (yes, there were a few of those, believe it or not) had to admit was an absolute bargain. Interestingly, the roadster was about £100 less than the coupe.

Its engine capacity grew to 4.2-litres in 1964, at which point the Jag started to go as well as it looked. The changes also included bigger disc brakes and an all-synchromesh gearbox. The so-called 1½ Series cars arrived in 1967 and the main changes were that the headlights now lacked the Perspex covers of the first cars, they featured twin Stromberg carbs, and the eared spinners on the wire wheels were now hexagonal.

The Series 2 cars lasted between 1968 and 1971. This iteration grew larger bumpers, relocated its rear lights and gained a new, safer interior.

Introduced to the range in 1966, the 2+2 body added nine inches to the wheelbase and considerable practicality to the car, thus expanding its potential ownership market.

The coupé was still available as a two-seater, something that was to change with the introduction of the series 3 cars in ’71. Thereafter, all coupés would be 2+2.

Overview
We know this car, which was sold new by Parkers of Bolton to D. Anderson on 13th December 1968.

It’s passed through the hallowed portals of our Oxfordshire HQ before.

Then, it was a non-running project in need of a fair bit of work just to get it back to decent mechanical order, let alone aesthetic perfection.

Today, it is a running project, in decent mechanical order, but still waiting for the aesthetic work to commence.

Then, as now, the stand-out quality that separates this car from other E Types of its type and era is its nailed-on, documented, obvious status as an unrestored, original and authentic survivor.

As we know from our experience of auctioning many E Types over the years, that quality is becoming increasingly hard to find, and accordingly more attractive to true marque and model enthusiasts.

The vendor, who has got the car up and running, sorted out the errant wiring looms, and generally ensured that it has a bright future as the bona fide classic it fully deserves to be, is only selling because he’s taken it as far as he can and now wants someone else to pick up the baton and finish the job.

Estimate: £20,000 - £25,000

View The Current Bid Price HERE