The famed Lindner-Nocker Low-drag Lightweight Jaguar E-type was today revealed to the world after a mind-blowing 7000 hour restoration. The work was done at Classic Motor Cars of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, whose owner Pete Neumark owns the car. The company has previously restored 9600 HP, the original Geneva Salon coupé owned by Jag afficianado Philip Porter, and 1 VHP, aka Chassic number 1.
More than 300 people attended the unveiling including Jaguar test driver Norman Dewis, Thomas Fritz (nephew of the car's original racer Peter Lindner) and Patrick Lansard, who rescued the wreck of the car from French authorities in 1974, a decade after it was involved in a horror smash at Montlhéry that killed driver Lindner and three marshalls.
After that the car went through a series of owners and wound up at Lynx where the mangled wreck of a shell was deemed beyond restoration, so it was put to one side while the car was built into a spare, genuine factory Lightweight shell. The Lynx-restored example was then displayed alongside the original shell for many years in the Rosso Bianco Collection before Neumark bought the car in 2007 and set about re-restoring the car into its original shell.
Every piece of metal was removed, flattened, then reshaped by craftsmen and, amazingly, they managed to salvage more than 90% of the original metal. The tricky Malcolm-Sayer designed low-drag bodywork – created specifically for Le Mans – alone took 5000 hours.
