E type with English rego

[gary moore]

Hi I am new to the E Type forum. I live in Brisbane Australia and will be going on 23 Jan to Atlanta, Georgia to look at an E type which is in the archives with a vin of 1E76593 which we are all aware of is a 2.2 2+2 LHD. It has an English rego of LHA 357E with a picture that has been taken fairly recently in America. The archive info says that it has been to White House Restorations in UK , converted to RHD and found its way back to the States. My question to the experts of the forum is as follows:
How can it have English rego corrrect to the year i.e. 67 when it was exported to the States LHD. Also could anybody give me contact details of White House Restorations as we cannot find them.
Thanks for anybody that can help

Just one further question, if I buy it and ship it back to Australia can anybody help with competitive transit insurance as I am being quoted more than 1.5% of value.

Thanks Gary

[kingzetts]

Hi Gary, welcome to the forum.

No mystery to the registration question - when you import a car into the UK from abroad and register it, the licensing agency will issue an age-appropriate registration number. For example, I imported a Porsche 911 from the US to the UK in 1993, which was registered with a P-suffix plate as appropriate to its 1976 build date.

You can change registration numbers here, but you cannot use a number which indicates that the car is younger than it actually is - otherwise you'd have people re-plating used cars to appear younger (and therefore more valuable) than they actually are.

So you'll find that all UK-registered cars have numbers which are as old as or older than the car, or which do not indicate age (pre-1962 plates were not age-related).

The only exception is where the age has not been or cannot be established at registration, in which case a Q-suffix plate is issued. Q-plated cars carry a stigma here (often being insurance writeoffs rebuilt from more than one donor) and as far as I know once a Q-plate is issued the vehicle is stuck with that and cannot be renumbered.

But I can't help with White Horse Restorations or your shipping insurance question. Good luck!

[kingzetts]

A bit more research uncovers this listing in www.classic-car-directory.com;

Whitehouse Restoration Co

Classic & Vintage Car Restorer Lead Loading Panel Fab

18 Thornleigh
Lower Gornal
Dudley
West Midlands
DY3 2JA
Great Britain

Tel: 01902 674657

No idea if this is the company you're looking for, but may be worth a call.

[christopher storey]

The other answer to the registration question is that a lot of US servicemen bought E types when on a tour here, and then took them to the US after 6 months use in the UK. Thus quite a few UK registered cars were LHD . Never heard of the restoration company - certainly it is not one of the half dozen or so well known ones