E type rebirth

[Simon P]

A Dutch friend of mine spotted the car yesterday on the JLR stand at TechnoClassica in Essen:

[Nickleback]

Here's a video showing three cars in the E-Type reborn programme and has some interesting details from the launch @ TechnoClassica show in Essen this week.

[mgcjag]

Hi Mike...thanks for posting...So they are not being restored to factory original as quoted previously......the finished car they had on show has a change of paint colour and interior colour, converted from lhd to rhd and electronic ignition.....they also said they would remove twin strombergs and fit SUs.....and the wishbones are zinc plated

[Jeremy]

I would be fascinated to see the investment case made to JLR leadership for this Reborn project. E.g. what return is it expected to generate? How do their overheads compare with the existing network of restorers?
How do the numbers add up when the consensus on this forum is that it's very hard to make a profit on a restoration (unless you stick to early 3.8s)? How and where have they recruited the necessary skills? The video indicates they plan to bring the trimming process in-house....Will they be poaching from the usual specialists? But perhaps all that misses the point and they are simply harnessing (at a cost) the unrivalled heritage of the E to boost the JLR brand and sales figures.....Jag is still tiny compared to the Germans and they won't have to make a huge improvement to wipe out the costs. Interesting business case and I would love to know if anybody has any clues....

[rfs1957]

I've watered down my initial judgement on this, but find it hard to believe that JLR will make all-new body-panel tooling just to produce a handful of cars every year, when - presumably - people like Robey have been doing it for decades ?

And I'd have thought that panel-fit issues are always going to be major on any E-Type unless you've made a complete new body from your "original drawings" ...........

Maybe the rationale is that if they have a small and specialised workforce facing a rather unpredictable work-load building Continuation cars, XKSS etc, then one way to smooth out the valleys would be to have "background" restorations going on to produce cars of the sort seen here.

[chrisfell]

I was under the impression that Jaguar Heritage owned the tooling. This was certainly the case 10 years ago when I stood in a long line waiting for a new 'Martin Robey' bonnet.

[Hugo]

I understand they are making new tooling to manufacture new body panels. Apparently they still have the bonnet presses, and still make them, although the formers are beginning to wear out now.
Interestingly, there was no mention of any upgrades; I presume they are using the original Moss box (it's just series Ones they are doing at the moment) or at least the four speed synchro.
I know if you make too many upgrades you turn it into a different car, but surely it would be sensible to incorporate things like a 5 speed box? And the donor cars are all being sourced in America as far as I can tell, so they may end up with 3.54 diff ratios? Strombergs even? It doesn't say. The focus does seem to be on originality though. To me, it's like struggling to play Beethoven piano sonatas on period instruments, which people still do for some reason. Interesting as an exercise in what Beethoven had to put up with I suppose, but I can guarantee he would have given his right arm for a modern concert grand.
I know restorations don't come cheap, but £285,000 is a heck of a lot of money! I'm sure you could get an equally good job for a lot less money from the dedicated and immensely skilled restorers already out there. There is nothing particularly sophisticated about the E Type which means it is a task only the manufacturers can perform - it's just hands-on skilled labour. Maybe there's some cachet to having the work performed by Jaguar?

[Heuer]

From yesterday's Daily Telegraph:

"Jaguar Land Rover will this week report record revenues as a combination of surging demand for its fast-growing range of premium cars and foreign exchange movements move its finances into top gear. Britain’s biggest car manufacturer is set to post annual revenues of more than £23bn on Tuesday after vehicle sales accelerated by 16pc to 604,000 in the year to the end of March. The rise puts it further down the road towards its goal of rivalling upmarket German manufacturers BMW and Mercedes. They each have global sales of more than 2m vehicles a year. Some experts forecast JLR will achieve annual sales of almost 800,000 cars by the end of the decade, a huge reversal of fortune for the Coventry-based manufacturer, which produced about 200,000 cars annually when it was sold by Ford almost a decade ago.

JLR’s recent strong performance is almost entirely down to the resurgence of Jaguar. Sales of the marque rose 83pc on the previous year to almost 173,000 cars — largely driven by demand for the new F-Pace, the first sports utility vehicle in the range. The F-Pace is also more profitable than the saloons which until the SUV’s introduction made up the vast bulk of Jaguar’s sales, with customers willing to pay a premium for the fashionable vehicles which are the fastest selling in the company’s 95-year history.

Land Rover remains the mainstay of the group’s sales, with 431,000 examples sold during the year, up just 1pc on the same period a year ago, as the iconic Defender off-roader was discontinued. Sterling’s slump in the wake of the EU referendum is also likely to give JLR’s revenues a boost at the headline level, with only about a fifth of the company’s cars sold in the UK.

The pound’s weakness against foreign currencies is set to deliver a strong tailwind to top line performance, with sales in China up by a third during the year to more than 130,000 and US demand increasing by a quarter, taking sales there to about 125,000. The impact of currency movements on profits may not be so pronounced, with financial “hedges” put in place to protect against exchange rate moves potentially holding back performance.

Pre-tax profit is set to jump from last year’s £1.56bn, which was hit by costs after an explosion and fire at the Tianjin Port in China which destroyed thousands of JLR cars stored there. An anti-corruption drive also hit JLR’s performance in China, one of the company’s most lucrative markets. Profits could be boosted by an insurance payout from the Tianjin disaster.

Since being bought from Ford in 2008 for £1.5bn by Tata, the Indian company has launched a massive investment programme, sinking more than £11bn into JLR in new models, technology and factories. The F-Pace is the most tangible result so far, but late last year JLR unveiled the I-Pace, the company’s first electric car and which is due to go on sale in 2018. Last summer JLR opened a plant in Brazil, its first wholly-owned foreign manufacturing factory, and started work on a new base in Slovakia. The company already has a plant in China which it jointly owns with a local company. In 2016, JLR said it planned to spend £3.75bn on R&D and facilities during the year, up from £3.1bn the previous year, and continued heavy investment could also put a the brakes on profits.

Ian Fletcher, principal analyst at IHS Insight, said: “JLR has been investing heavily and I think there’s a bit of a struggle now as it transitions to a new generation of vehicles. Bringing these cars to market is expensive and I think it could be a pressure point on profits now but it will reap the dividends in 12 to 18 months.” IHS is forecasting JLR sales of 780,000 a year by 2020. Mr Fletcher added: “That is just on the visibility we have at the moment — there’s strong speculation JLR broaden its range into smaller cars and other areas, which could mean sales are much higher.”

Professor David Bailey, an automobile expert at Aston University, added: “It has certainly been a decent year for sales, with the F-Pace delivering a huge boost and the new models are setting the company up for the long term. The currency movement will deliver a boost to top line sales.”

The continuation and restoration programs are there for the sole purpose of generating publicity for the brand. The £285K restored car was featured in almost every newspaper around the world and on many TV news feeds. Ditto the LWE's, XKSS, D-Type's and 3 door Range Rovers - each got extensive coverage. Any idea how much that amount of publicity would cost if you had to buy it? Pippa's wedding was icing on the cake.

[mystery type]

Pippa's wedding was icing on the WEDDING cake.