A QUEST FOR PERFECTION

The 30-year saga of one man's obsessive mission to return an early Jaguar E-type to factory-fresh condition

- MARTIN BUCKLEY

You might think there would not be much left to say about Jaguar E-type restoration. And yet, after listening to model expert Paul Bridges, you begin to realise that there is still quite a lot we don't really know about how these cars were put together. The saga of Bridges' epic rebuild of this very early 3.8-litre roadster spans three decades, with surges of activity at either end. The restored car had its debut at Salon Privé last year, the first time it had been seen in public for 50 years.

Having won the combined Jaguar car clubs' 60th-anniversary concours in July, 160 RKJ is now widely accepted as the “reference quality early E-type roadster, so painstaking have been Bridges' labours in making sure that every detail - quite literally down to the last nut, bolt, screw and washer - is absolutely correct.

Το say that all of the numbers match is only the beginning. It would be fair to suggest that this Jaguar has been rebuilt with an attention to detail normally reserved for precious antiques and works of art. It is a lovely balance of preservation and painstakingly accurate restoration. Having spent 30 years squirrelling away new-old-stock parts - he even found a set of original, unused Dunlop RS5 crossply tyres that had not seen the light of day since the early 1970s - Bridges was possibly uniquely placed to hit these heights, not least because he also had a 31-year engineering career at Jaguar, latterly as the programme manager for JLR's 'Reborn project and setting up the reverse-engineering for E-type body tooling. Since 2018 he has worked for himself as Heritage Classics, based in Kenilworth, having by then put several award-winning E-type restorations under his belt.