Documented build · Jaguar E-type Series 1, 3.8 Fixed Head Coupé
Jaguar E-Type — 941 PVO
Eight years · 450 hours of labour
Above — the Jaguar script, raised chrome on Opalescent Silver Blue.
A car we did not build alone
This one is not DPM's restoration. It belongs to Mark Antwis, who did the mechanical rebuild and the metalwork himself and sent us the bodyshell for finishing and paint — the way a restorer sometimes hands one part of a job to the people they trust most with it.
He wrote the story himself for the E-Type Owners Club Magazine — nine pages, April 2026, headlined "A Promise Kept". He came to us because of a different car first — his own Aston Martin V8, which we painted the year before.
- Marque
- Jaguar
- Model
- E-type Series 1, 3.8 Fixed Head Coupé
- Built
- 1962 — the 787th FHC made
- Colour
- Opalescent Silver Blue
- Registration
- 941 PVO
- Owner & restorer
- Mark Antwis
- DPM's part
- Panel gapping, levelling, flatting and paint
- Published in
- E-Type Owners Club Magazine, April 2026 (9 pages)
A forty-seven-year promise
Brian Bray bought 941 PVO in 1978 for £410, with his nine-year-old son Matthew, as its third owner. It was already sixteen years old and needed a full restoration. The engine was rebuilt, the body stripped and sand-blasted — and then, as families and decades do, the project stalled. It sat dismantled in boxes for the best part of forty years.
By 2017 Brian had retired to a farm in Leicestershire and Matthew was forty-eight. Reluctantly, the family decided to sell, and the car went under the hammer at H&H Auctions, Duxford, on 29 March 2017. Mark Antwis was the fourth bidder and the winner.
He already had a Ferrari 308 and a self-restored Aston Martin V8 in the workshop; the E-type completed what he calls his "dreamed-of stable of classics". His method, in his own words: "conserving and restoring rather than replacing".
He trusted us with the Aston. Then the E-type.
Mark did the mechanicals and the metalwork himself — four hundred and twenty hours on the metalwork alone, by his own account. The shell and panels came to us for what came next.
Primer, then Opalescent Silver Blue.
Flatting the shell in primer. The stage before any colour goes on: panel gapping, levelling and flatting, by hand.
The same shell, finished. Opalescent Silver Blue, gleaming under our own workshop lights.
- 450 hours Panel work through primer, colour, five coats of lacquer and machine polish — the magazine's figure for the whole job, over three months.
"I had interviewed many body shops for the painting of my concours-winning Aston Martin. The only person I would trust with the E-type was the man who had laid down that paint with such astonishingly beautiful results."
E-Type Owners Club Magazine, April 2026, page 22. Transcribed verbatim. This is the sentence that put David's name on a page he did not write, for a car DPM does not own.
The E-type job did not come from a stranger finding us. It came from a repeat customer — his first car with us was the Aston Martin V8 that won at Sandringham.
The car, as its owner sees it
Every image below is the owner's own photograph of his finished car, outdoors, in daylight.
The finished car, whole. Photographed by its owner, Mark Antwis, after eight years of restoration.
Rear three-quarter, against a brick wall.
Bonnet and windscreen, from above.
Door, mirror and handle, chrome against Opalescent Silver Blue.
Wood-rimmed wheel, through the screen.
Gear lever, handbrake, instruments. New trim by Aldridge Trimming.
Headlight and bumper, chrome detail.
Engine bay, finished and dressed. Polished cam covers, triple SU carburettors — mechanical work Mark did himself.
Bonnet underside, painted, not left in primer.
Filler cap, close.
The Aston Martin that came first
Before the E-type, Mark restored a 1974 Aston Martin V8 himself, nut-and-bolt, from a bare shell — and sent it to David for the same thing: paint.
Mark Antwis with the class-winner's trophy, AMOC Sandringham Concours 2024.
- Car
- 1974 Aston Martin AMV8, Pentland Blue
- Restored by
- Mark Antwis, nut-and-bolt, from bare shell
- Paint
- David and DPM Autobody
- AMOC Sandringham Concours, 2024
- Class winner — 92%, best in class, Newport Pagnell 8-cylinder
- AMOC Hampton Court, 2024
- Commended by the judges for the standard of restoration and originality
Bring us the car you are not willing to compromise on.
Ask for David Pearce-Martin. He would rather see a car than quote from photographs of one, so the first conversation usually ends with a date to bring it over. Dave, Ellis and Paul are who you will meet when you do.