Registry: 1960 Jaguar Mark IX

This car was purchased as a restoration project. It doesn't look like much now but has a straight, clean body with virtually no rust or damage. The interior has been redone, albeit in incorrect materials but is otherwise in good shape. The paint on the car is pretty bad, with an early single stage metallic over brown, where the metallic has gone dead flat. The engine ran and the car drove, but the previous owner started it with old fuel and stuck a valve, so now it needs to come out for a complete rebuild ore replacement. I'm somewhat of two minds as to what to do about the car. I can either rebuild the engine, service the car and drive it as-is for the classiest rat rod ever, or do a full restoration on the car while the engine is out of it. The only significant rust in the car is in one of the rear wheel spats, so that should be easily dealt with, but paint is just expensive no matter what, so it depends on how much I want to get this car back on the road and how much time I want to spend working on it. If I paint it it will have a colour change and won't be white as I don't want a wedding car. There's a nice two tone red and a two tone blue original paint job, both of which look good. Right now, however, the first step is to pull the engine and determine if it is salvageable. If not, then I'll probably drop in a spare 4.2 Liter XK engine that I have sitting in my shop instead.