The new Eagle Lightweight GT is utterly exquisite

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.”

So while it still looks like a Lightweight to most eyes – and to anyone’s eyes looks just plain gorgeous – it boasts some very un-Lightweight like attributes: luxury cabin, sumptuous seats, extra legroom and air-conditioning plus a not-too-shouty exhaust and not-too-unyielding ride.

“Far more challenging (than to do a pure track car) is to combine taut, sportscar dynamics with the ride quality and refinement of a world-class grand tourer,” explains Eagle’s technical director Paul Brace.

If it has a softer side its vital statistics hardly show it. The Eagle Lightweight GT lives up to its name by weighing in at an impressive 1,017kg, more than the original but not much more. This amount of mass is thrust towards the horizon by more power than the original enjoyed – 385PS – accessed by an all-synchro five-speed manual gearbox and slippery diff.

The engine is Eagle’s evolution of the Jag XK straight-six, complete with the race car’s aluminium block as well as bespoke crankshaft, pistons and con rods, along with wide-angle head with big valves and a higher lift camshaft. Triple Webers of course.

Less authentic is the engine size: it’s 4.7-litres, not 3.8. Benefit comes in the form of a flat torque curve that peaks at 508Nm (375lb ft) at 4,000 rpm. Performance? 0-60mph is said to be under 5.0 seconds with a top speed of 170mph plus.

The impressively low weight is achieved by a complete reskinning in aluminium of a Series 1 E-type roadster, the donor vehicle that forms the basis of each new Eagle Lightweight. It takes workers 2,500 hours to hammer out the signature bulges and curves of the body.

Aficionados will spot design changes over an original Lightweight that include deeper sills, enlarged wheel arches and more raked windscreens front and back. Inside, the floorpan, pedal mountings and rear bulkhead have been tweaked to increase legroom. Öhlins adjustable dampers are fitted and brakes upgraded to servoed AP Racing four-pot calipers on vented discs.

The wheels get the Eagle treatment too. They are 16-inch peg-drive magnesium alloys, modelled on the original Dunlop racing wheels and complete with aluminium three-eared spinners. As Eagle says, the wheels are – like so much of the rest of this machine – ultimate evolutions of the correct period technologies. All of which makes Eagle’s latest machine surely its biggest hit yet.