E-Type restoration, one skinned knuckle at a time.
Coventry built the E-Type, and the city still carries the ghosts of that industry if you know where to drive. This is a practical half-day route through Browns Lane, Whitley and the transport museum, with parking notes, café stops and a few words from local owners who still use their cars in the city.
Historic-vehicle MOT exemption is a tax-time paperwork status, not a promise that your E-Type is safe. Here is a realistic Saturday-morning walkaround covering the fifteen things a tester would still have poked at, with the E-Type weak spots worth knowing before the first proper run of spring 2026.
The seller says the E-Type is solid. In a British damp garage, that word needs checking. Here is where to poke, what a magnet and borescope actually reveal, and how to tell a project from a structural money pit.
A perfect E-Type is a lovely thing, but a used one tells a better story. This is an argument for keeping the stone chips, the scuffed chrome and the miles visible — while still drawing a hard line at structural rust.
A soggy-garage diary of deciding whether to SORN or keep the E-Type taxed, then getting it through a British winter without feeding the rust worms. Battery conditioning, flat spots, ventilation and the sill, floor and boot traps that matter.
Most home restorers buy too many tools too soon and still round off the first SU carburettor nut. Here is an opinionated £500 kit for E-Type jobs that actually matter, plus five boot-sale bargains to leave alone.