This Florida Company Is Modernizing Jaguar E-Types

Photo: Andy Kalmowitz

This right here is the reason I flew down to Kissimmee, Florida in the middle of the most humid summer of all time. What you see a very happy Andy behind the wheel of is an E.C.D. E-Type with a 6.2-liter LS V8 under the hood bolted up to a GM eight-speed transmission with push button controls. What an absolutely bonkers machine.

This thing is able to stop, go and corner like a modern car. It reaches far beyond what the engineers back in England in the ‘70s thought was possible. However, it still has much of the charm the original cars have. Sure, it’s got a honking great V8 under the hood, but its sound is routed through an actual E-Type exhaust. That means you get a rather wonderful blend of American V8 grunt and British smoothness. The whole package is pretty intoxicating.

Inside, everything is fairly well screwed together. Although, the buttons could be a bit higher quality, but the folks at E.C.D. made sure to remind me that this isn’t a totally complete car, so there’s still some fine-tuning to do. That includes mechanical issues. Under sudden acceleration, there was a good deal of slop from the differential, but I was told that would be almost completely gone by the time the customer got their hands on the car.

For the nearly $330,000 they are paying for one of these E-Types, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that E.C.D. does just about everything they can to make the car feel as good as possible. That being said, you can still spend a whole lot more on one of them, depending on how it’s spec’d. The sky is sort of the limit with these E-Types, and E.C.D. is not in the business of saying no. In a world of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and McLarens, a restomoded E-Type made by craftsmen who really give a damn about the work they’re doing may just stand out above just about everything else.