Enzo Ferrari called it “the most beautiful car ever made” and while this may be a bit of an exaggeration its not as if the Jaguar E-Type isn’t a bona fide icon. It turns pretty much every head, makes a glorious noise and was utterly dominant in its day on the race track. It’s also an expensive thing to own, so if you’re thinking of investing in one then it makes sense to make some cold heartless and logical evaluations first. Resource
One of those logical evaluations you should be making is whether or not to buy a ‘reborn’ E-Type. In short, these are cars that have been fully restored by Jaguar’s in-house department, Jaguar Classic, but they’re not traditional restorations. Jaguar Classic will build a car to its original specification using its own parts, tools and plans from the time of production.
Customizing a Legend: Personalizing E-Type Jaguars for Discerning Tastes
They’re not restomods, though, and the difference is important. A restomod has modern engineering woven through it, making the car better than it was but essentially a hybrid. A reborn car, on the other hand, is an old E-Type that, for a few subtle and invisible tweaks, could have jumped from the Sixties straight to the 2020s.
The six E-Type Lightweights Jaguar built 60 years after the fact are a good example of this. They were originally slated to be a run of 18 cars but the company had to cancel them and so, using unused chassis numbers, it decided to build new continuation examples from the spare parts that were left over.