This is a really unbelievable story. You’re looking at a 1957 Jaguar XK140 DHC that we started restoring over thirty years ago. The car came to us for a complete restoration, but sadly, the owner passed away during the project.
The Jag was inherited by his grandson who was very young at the time. As a result, the car was placed into storage where it sat silent for nearly thirty years. We always wondered what became of the car until we recently received a phone call from the grandson asking if we could restart the project that had stalled so many years ago.
We were absolutely amazed when we saw the car again for the first time in over three decades; it was in virtually in the exact same condition as the day it left the shop! It was like going back in time. The grandson had the car in storage the entire time and kept it in ideal conditions so there was no further deterioration. He knew he wanted to someday complete the project his grandfather had started.
The car was originally an automatic, which our customer wanted to swap out for a manual. Luckily, we just happened to have an XK140 overdrive transmission sitting around in our parts storage. We completely rebuilt the overdrive transmission, bench tested it, and installed it. As we said, the car had been sitting for thirty years so much of the work we did was going over previous work that was done long ago. We went through the entire brake system as well as the cooling system again in order to ensure it was absolutely reliable and safe. The engine we had rebuilt thirty years ago fired right up and sounded wonderful.
Needless to say, we were thrilled that he chose to bring the car back to us to finish the job, and even happier that he held onto the car all these years and now has a chance to truly enjoy it see it through to fruition and make a lost loved one’s dream come true.
Make sure to check out all our photos of the finished product!
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