Meet Stew Jones, the award winning Jaguar restorer who’s blind

By: Alex Affat, Unique Cars magazine

Date: 06.12.2019

Powerful and inspiring YouTube docomentary about the blind V12 Jaguar restorer

Stew Jones, of Stew Jones Restoration, is the lead man behind one of America’s leading Jaguar V12 restorers.

He was the first man ever awarded a Jaguar Club of North America Class 7-100 point restoration for a Series III V12 Jaguar E-type – oh, and he’s blind.

In 1985, Stew was t-boned by a van while pulling out of an intersection; it hit him right in the driver's door. His ribs punctured his lungs, and his aorta. He was in acoma for eight days, and while he ultimately made a full physical recovery; for unknown reasons he unfortunately lost his sight.

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An autoshop teacher at the time, Stew was unable to continue his profession due to his sudden disability, but amazingly just two years later – he fixed up, by hand, the old brick building that now houses his restoration business, and founded Stew Jones Restoration.

35 years, and many awards, later Stew is still on the tools, not one to let his lack of eye sight keep him from his vision and pursuit of classic Jaguar perfection.

We came across this fantastic student-made Youtube documentary; centred around his story, that of his wife Karen, and how his small team of restorers all come together to produce world-class cars.

"You can pretty much do anything you want, if you will make the effort – you have to make some trade-offs, I can never tell what colour a car is so people have to help me with that" says Stew in the mini-documentary.

If you have a spare 13 minutes this weekend, we’d highly recommend putting your feet up and watching his incredible story.

See the video above.

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