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Let’s face it, restoring any old car while still at school is quite an achievement, but TVF 443G is not just any old car! A Jaguar Mk2 is still the height of cool and harks back to the days when British marques dominated the luxury car market. However, while you certainly had to be well-heeled to own this big cat, there was a sinister element lurking behind the Mk2’s distinctive radiator that gave the car a bit of a bad-boy image. This was fuelled by popular 1970s television dramas like The Sweeney where the Mk2 always seemed to be the favourite getaway car for London’s gangsters, or Inspector Morse when it was used to catch them.

Certainly the Mk2 was a fast and capable saloon in line with Sir William Lyons’ 1950s advertising slogan: grace… space… pace. The car was in production for ten years, until it was eventually phased out in the spring of 1969. Damien’s model 240 was one of the last off the line.

‘Our family have been big Jaguar fans for years,’ Damien’s father Paul explained. ‘It all started with Eric, Damien’s grandad. He owned a couple of Jags when he was still in his early twenties. This would have been unusual