Unleashed by E-Type UK 2021 Car News

It’s more restaurant than mod, if you want to dismantle the coat rack. This is the Unleashed, a restored and partially modified Jaguar E-Type 3 Series roadster with the descriptive name E-Type UK, a specialist in restoration and sale (and now modification) based on a pretty farmhouse in the Kent.

In a cluster of tidy buildings, E-Type UK has a good number of cars in storage, repair and restoration, or prepared for sale. E-Type UK says it is budgeting up to £ 160,000 for a full restoration.

Ten cars passing through its doors, however, will become these Unleashed models, all 3 Series roadsters, which will have 4,000 hours dedicated to becoming like the car you see here. For this, E-Type UK is asking for £ 390,000 (VAT included) plus a donor car, which according to the prices in the classifieds means it will end up being a half-million-pound car, at give or take. Three are unsold. So far, all but one are destined to go abroad.

Built between 1971 and 1974, the 3 Series models completed the life of the E-Type and came with a V12 to maintain their appeal in an American market hungry for cylinders and displacement, but they are perhaps the least. appreciated by all E-Types. With nerfable US mandatory bumpers and a large chrome ring around the grille, plus the fact that all coupes were bulbous-glass 2 + 2 versions, to my eyes they look the most clumsy of all E.

This is perhaps what is behind the selection of E-Type UK roadsters for this Unleashed series. Even with the removable hardtop installed here, the sleek, sleek profile of previous cars has been revived and the more unsightly parts of the bumpers have been removed, the chrome removed around the grille to “float” again. . In addition, as we can imagine, a lot of work hours were spent putting the panels back in the right shape and putting them back in place. The fit of the panel and the paint finish is absolutely perfect.

You may notice that there are more louvers in the hood, which is necessary given the mechanical improvements we are going to come up with, while the wheels are still wire-frame and, with a diameter of 16 inches, an inch bigger than the originals – but, fortunately, nothing like the terrible big more modern ones adapted, for example, to the David Brown Speedback GT.

The metalwork extends to lowering the cross members to gain some headroom and reinforcing the car’s sills to increase chassis stiffness, which I’m happy to hear. Torsional stiffness is one of the main reasons modern cars drive better than older ones. (And that’s something Alfaholics nails with its GTA models, where it adapts to a subtle cage to bring levels of stiffness to race cars.)

While the exterior of the Unleashed has been modestly redesigned, the interior has undergone a much more significant makeover. The basic dashboard architecture is similar, but as the industry rallied around textured moldings in the 1970s, E-Type UK reverted to piano black wood, aluminum and leather, all beautifully assembled. The air vents are pretty directional aluminum things with an aerospace vibe and there’s a perfectly integrated stereo that looks vintage but has Bluetooth and DAB. There is even air conditioning.

The theme is the same under the hood: classic styling with a modern twist. The period engine is retained (cars with matching chassis and engine numbers remain more desirable) but the capacity is increased from the original 5.3 liters to 6.1 liters, mainly by increasing the stroke. There are new cylinder liners but the block is not rebored. The engine runs on fuel injection and independent throttle bodies (the management system, like the air conditioning gubbins, is located in discreet boxes on the bulkhead) and it has a larger radiator and more large number of louvers to cope with the increased heat.