Another way of buying an E-type is at auction. Personally, I would advise people to be very wary, unless the car in question is an historic car with a known history. The Lightweight E-types are, for example, a very different matter! For lesser cars, the auction can be a way of quickly getting rid of something that would not sell in any other way. It can be a last resort. The extremely brief descriptions given in the catalogue are often vague and may not be based on reality. The cars may not been viewed by the auctioneers and the catalogues are thus written from the vendor's own highly optimistic, favourable opinions of their car. I know all this because many years ago, I was retained by a large firm of auctioneers to write some of their classic car catalogue entries. Typically, the first two thirds of the catalogue description is waffle about the model of car, rather than the specific example in question.

Obviously, you have no way of thoroughly examining the car being offered and cannot road test it. Please be very careful.

This is not say that there are not a few reputable auction houses but caution is needed and one should never make an impulse purchase.