Meet the Florida Company Tapping Into America’s Love of Land Rovers. It’s About to Go Public.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the “restomod”—old cars with new engines and appointments like Bluetooth and air-conditioning—which is quickly getting popular with classic car enthusiasts. Auto fanatics, particularly the younger ones, are making it clear that they’re often willing to pay more for a restomod than for a 100% back-to-original restoration. 

There are two production lines at E.C.D. Automotive Design in Kissimmee, Fla., one for the Land Rover Defender and the other for the Series III Jaguar E-Type, the last and most sophisticated iteration of the sleek sportster. Each E.C.D. car is different, because aside from choosing a modern powertrain, customers have a wide choice on everything else—from brakes and wheels to upholstery. E.C.D.’s guiding principle is that the consumer can get anything they want, within reason, and such bespoke luxury doesn’t come cheap—the finished vehicles are priced around US$300,000 but can go higher. 

E.C.D. has grown enormously from the time it was a single-garage-sized space. The current 100,000-square-foot facility opened a year ago, and now has a staff of 70. Annual revenue has grown from US$240,000 to US$25 million. The company is profitable and soon to go public on Nasdaq with a US$225 million valuation.

Scott Wallace, the CEO, is one of four transplanted British people who founded the company, which will be known as E.C.D. Automotive after the stock listing. The product line is soon to expand with a third European car, but not a British one like the other two. . 

“It all started in 2013 with a barbecue with fellow expats at my house here in Florida,” he says. “My background was in private equity—I was no mechanic—but we discovered our mutual love of cars.” 

The ideas that came out of those discussions included getting Americans excited about old British cars with plenty of go-power. The principles, written on a Post-It note, included having just about everything done in-house, and to provide a very satisfying, totally immersive experience for customers. Wallace was convinced that element was missing, even at the higher-end automakers. Every car was to be one-of-one, built to detailed, owner-approved specifications. That includes color—Wallace says one customer brought in her high-end handbag and had that specific shade mixed to order. 

Wallace led a tour of the Defender line. Originally called the 90 or 110, it was introduced in 1983 and continued to 2012, though U.S. sales ended in 1997. Some 737,000 were built, with a variety of four-cylinder and Rover V-8 engines, as well as a turbo diesel variant. They were go-anywhere vehicles with fairly basic interiors, and never hugely fast. 

The large production means that E.C.D. doesn’t have a problem sourcing rough-and-ready Defenders. That’s one reason it maintains a small operation in England. A row of battered vehicles face the garages in Kissimmee, waiting for their chance at a makeover. 

Wallace explained that the Defender gets built in 20 total stages, taking 80 days. Five of those stages are final assembly. The E-Type takes longer, 110 days in 18 stages. 

“We’re still learning about the E-Type,” he says. “But we have more than 500 Defenders produced. By next year, we expect to be able to produce an E-Type every four or five days, comparable to the Defender now.” 

The whole process of designing the car with the customer’s participation and then having it delivered takes nine to 12 months, says John Price, head of vehicle design. For instance,the Defender builds consume 2,200 man-hours.In the last two stages, the car is finalized. The seats and consoles come in from the upholstery room and are installed. In some cases, brand-new US$2,000 Recaro seats are stripped down and rebuilt so they’ll fit into the Defender. The Land Rovers also get larger, 36-gallon fuel tanks because with a GM V-8 these vehicles are looking at 12 miles per gallon. Half an inch of sound and heat insulation goes in. 

The last stage is quality control, and the cars get driven, faults found, and sorted. The 1974 Jaguar E-Type test car was in that stage, and squeaking brakes and a recalcitrant door latch were being addressed. In EV form it has 150 miles of range; the Defender EV has 200. 

Charles Bigelow is the production manager for the E-Type and he led the tour of that line. The process is similar to the Defender, with an initial teardown. Only 15,287 of these Series III Jaguar E-Types were built, so sourcing them—mostly in the U.S., where most of the production went—is more difficult. Typically, US$40,000 to US$65,000 is spent on the donor cars. An E-Type from Arizona was full of wasp nests. 

The original 5.3-liter V-12 in a ’74 E-Type produced 272 horsepower, yielding zero-to-60 times of 6.4 seconds and a top speed of 149 mph. That’s not too bad, but with either electric power or the LT1, the car leaps to 350 horsepower or more. The reborn E-Type can achieve zero to 60 in under four seconds. Prices start at US$289,995. 

Approximately a quarter of Jaguar customers are choosing electric power, and 60 percent want the LT1, Price says. “With the electric you get instant torque and tremendous performance,” he says. 

The Jaguar is considerably curvier than the upright Land Rover, so body prep takes longer, and E.C.D. employs some specialists who know the cars well. Panel alignment, including hood and doors, can be time-consuming in Jaguars. One car on the line, in Cotswold blue, was getting the first installation of E.C.D.’s second-generation electric powertrain, with 42 kilowatt-hours of battery. The Land Rovers, 2,500 pounds heavier, use larger packs. The advantage of using popular motors like the GM LS1 and LS4 is that they can be serviced anywhere. The electric vehicles use LG cells in a proprietary pack, a Cascadia motor, and special packaging—one owner wanted a wooden deck over the rear-mounted batteries. But Wallace says that E.C.D. does plan on building service centers, initially in Georgia, Florida, New York, Texas, California and Washington state. These centers will have a social club component, similar to Hagerty’s Garage + Social, and will also honor two-year drivetrain warranties. 

E.C.D. says 22% of its business is repeat customers, and one customer is on his sixth build. But the company is by no means alone in this field. An English company called Electrogenic converts E-Types to electric power…carefully, claiming that they can easily be repowered with their original twin-cam engines. It does Defenders, too. EV West in San Diego, Calif., converts all kinds of cars to EV, often with Tesla power. Velocity will build you a K5 Blazer for $339,900. The field is growing.