It was back in 2018 that I was introduced to Anthony Cheng by a mutual friend. He needed assistance in sourcing an E-type to facilitate his long-held ambition to add the model to his collection. Having inspected some potential purchases on his behalf, however, it became apparent that despite appearances, all had shortcomings of one form or another when examined up close, as well as being too expensive to act as potential donor car for a restoration and major upgrade.
I then came to hear of a possibility owned by Jaguar specialist Tom Lenthall. A few years previously, he’d bought himself a matching-numbers Series 3 E-type, dismantled on several pallets as a project, the idea being that he and his wife, Meg, could share the car during that elusive time off. As is the way of business, however, customer work naturally got in the way of personal ventures and the car lived on the backburner.
Progress was slow, but that didn’t stop them from fully stripping the car down to its component parts and starting on the body.
