Eagle calls its new baby the most comprehensively upgraded E-type ever built, a reimagining that took 8,000 hours of hand-crafting. The result, they say and few will doubt, makes it the best an E-type can be. Eagle has spent the past three years building one, and is now ready to build more – but no more than two a year – at prices deep into six figures.
Like the other Eagle E-types going back 35 years that have established the firm’s global reputation, the Lightweight GT stays true to the “restomod” ethos and is in no way intended to be an authentic recreation of the original. Jaguar themselves did that six years ago with a run of six continuation Lightweights, newly-built but true in every detail to their famous forebears right down to using up allotted, but never previously used, Lightweight chassis numbers.
Early ‘60s original or 2014 continuation, the Lightweight was a stripped-out race car, highly focused on track but with little regard for road comforts and regular use. Noisy, brutal, exhilarating and exhausting is Eagle’s verdict. Eagle founder Henry Pearman tells us:
“We wanted to retain that special feel of a ‘60s competition car from an incredible era in British motorsport, but with the comfort, refinement and reliability that would make it an exhilarating daily driver or long-distance GT.”