Jaguar XK120 Restoration award

The classic car restoration specialists are the only company to have won this prestigious award twice.
The epic 6,725-hour restoration of the one-off Pininfarina bodied 1954 Jaguar XK120 SE by world-class specialists Classic Motor Cars (CMC) won the Restoration of the Year award at the Octane Awards, presented on Thursday 16th November in London.

This is the second time that CMC takes home the Restoration of the Year accolade; having done so previously in 2011 with the restoration of the Lindner-Nocker Lightweight, a legendary Jaguar that many thought to be beyond repair. The restorers are the only company to have won this award twice.

Nigel Woodward, managing director at Classic Motor Cars, said: “CMC are tremendously grateful to the judging panel for their recognition of skill and craftsmanship of our team of specialists who created this restoration. We are also blown away to have won this award for the second time.”

This XK120 features unique bodywork by famed Italian design house Pininfarina. It was first delivered to Automotive Hall of Fame inductee Max Hoffman in 1954, an Austrian-born, New York-based importer of luxury European automobiles into the United States, who inspired the production and refinement of several vehicles. It is believed that Hoffman inspired Pininfarina to reinterpret the shapes of the XK and then unveiled it at the 1955 Geneva Motor Show.

During the forensic inspection it was found that Pininfarina had used the original XK body as the basis, also that a previous owner had painted the exterior in Burgundy, covered the seats with tan leather and changed various other aspects.

CMC’s specialists faced many challenges. Some of the original parts were impossible to find such as bumpers and chrome work, so CMC remade them by hand from photographs. The technicians also had to scan the front and rear end of the car in order to make mock ups of the lights, which were then scanned and reproduced. Smaller missing items were also produced in-house.

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