E-TYPE UK UNLEASHED

Series 3 roadster is upgraded for 21st-century life, but not so much that it loses its original appeal. Quite the reverse, in fact

- MATT PRIOR

TESTED 26.8.21, KENT ON SALE NOW PRICE £500,000 (APPROX) E-TYPE UK

This is more resto than mod, if you want to disassemble the portmanteau. It’s the Unleashed, a restored and part-modified Series 3 Jaguar E-Type roadster from the descriptively named E-Type UK, a restoration and sales (and now modification) specialist based on a pretty farm in Kent.

In a group of tidy buildings, E-Type UK has a good number of cars in storage, repair and restoration or prepared for sale. The company says to budget up to £160,000 for a full restoration.

Ten cars passing through its doors, though, will become these Unleashed models, all of them Series 3 roadsters, which will have 4000 hours lavished on them to become like the car you see here. For this, E-Type UK asks £390,000 (including VAT) plus a donor car, which, going by prices in the classifieds, means this will end up a half-million-pound car, give or take. Three are left unsold. All but one so far is destined to go overseas.

Built between 1971 and 1974, Series 3 models rounded out the E-Type’s life (see separate story, p21) and came with a V12 to retain appeal in an American market hungry for cylinders and displacement, but they’re perhaps the least loved of all E-Types. With nerfable bumpers mandated in the US and a big chrome ring around the grille, plus the fact that all the coupés were the bulbously glassed 2+2 versions, they look to my eyes the most clumsy of all E-Types.