A 1964 Jaguar E-Type has been recently discovered sitting in an abandoned, overgrown garden in Gloucester, England. The sports coupe was found partly submerged into the ground and covered with a thick layer of foliage.
As it later turned out, the owner of the vehicle suddenly fell ill around 30 years ago, and ended up leaving no one to take care of the car. Throughout all these years, the E-Type kept rotting and sinking further into the soil. It even burned once.
Those who stumbled upon the car immediately contacted Jaguar Land Rover to take the vehicle in for restoration, which it did. The company succeeded in restoring some of the chassis, but had to repair or replicate the rest. Interestingly, the original cylinder head group was found to be undamaged and therefore made a good fit for the car’s new 4.2-liter engine.
The restored Jaguar has already found a new owner and is now on sale again for what roughly corresponds to U.S. $125,000. Better-preserved (read: not barn-found) E-type vehicles generally cost around $200,000 nowadays.
In related news, Land Rover has recently restored an SUV concept it produced all the way back in 1948. The one-off prototype vehicle has been sitting in the backyard in England since the 1960s.