MOTORS
TEACHING AN OLD CAT
NEW TRICKS Classic cars are great when they work... but that’s sometimes a frustratingly rare occurrence. Happily a number of specialists like Matthew and Heather Ambrose now offer the best of both worlds, teaching old cats new tricks with a mechanical upgrade... Words: Rob Davis.
TAKE A LOOK AROUND and you’ll find that Jaguar’s E-Type, once declared by Mini designer Alec Issigonis to be ‘the most beautiful car in the world,’ is available in quite some quantity.
Matthew and Heather Ambrose will help you to avoid such an eye-watering of classic car expenditure, and the hassle of an unreliable purchase, with their Classic 120 and Classic 140 replicas.
Later 1970s Series III E-Type with the bigger and ostensibly better V12 engines are cheaper and can be picked up for around £50,000 depending on condition. But the really desirable - and pricier - models are the Mk I and Mk IIs E-Types.
Prices are from £62,679 and with modern mechanicals, not only are you likely to enjoy a more reliable classic car experience, but a more civilised one, too.
But E-Types majored on luxury. And they’re a bit... well, predictable. The real Jaguar enthusiasts covet the E-Type’s predecessor, Jaguar’s XK120 and XK140.
Essentially a kit car, Nostalgia Cars’ XK120 uses the mechanicals from a modern Jaguar and can accommodate a modern engine, fully rebuilt if necessary and displaced out to 3.6 litres. There’s an automatic gearbox as standard, making driving rather easier than wrestling with an old school gearbox.
These can command a price of anywhere from £100,000 to £200,000, and were built purely for racing and to achieve high speed records from 1948 - 1954, and 1954-1957.
A manual gearbox is optional, as is power steering, and air con. You can specify an analogue clock and even an infotainment system, if you can’t bear to be parted from
