There are lots of outfits devoted to enhancing and sustaining Jaguar’s timeless icon, together with the US-based ECD Automotive Design and the UK’s Helm. You possibly can even electrify an E-Kind, courtesy of Electrogenic, whereas over a decade in the past, JLR’s personal Particular Automobile Operations tackled a brief run of six scratch-built Light-weight fashions.
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
However of all the businesses retaining the E-Kind firmly of their sights, Eagle E-Kinds of Sussex, UK, is maybe probably the most acclaimed. Based in 1984 by Henry Pearman, the corporate began ‘remanufacturing’ the E-Kind in 1991 and has gone on to change into the world’s main specialist restorer of the mannequin. At one level, there was a seven-year ready listing for an Eagle.
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
From the flip of the century, Eagle has additionally delved into creating distinctive E-Kind Particular Editions of its personal design, beginning with the Eagle Speedster, adopted by the Low Drag GT, Spyder GT and Light-weight GT.
Now the corporate has gone additional with this, the Eagle Light-weight GTR. Taking the unique Nineteen Sixties racing Light-weight E-Kind because the template, the GTR was commissioned by an exacting shopper to discover the boundaries of light-weight efficiency design.
Below the bonnet of the Eagle Light-weight GTR
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
The voluptuous curves are all current and proper but pared again to chic minimalism, with flush particulars, and precision panel gaps. The E-Kind is a well-known and feted kind, a phenomenal, era-defining machine that’s additionally the aesthetic straitjacket Jaguar by no means fairly managed to flee from. Eagle doesn’t want to fret about all that, nevertheless, and has as a substitute centered on stripping out weight and creating an exacting, driving-focused specification.
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
All in all, the Light-weight GTR ideas the scales at simply 930kg, lower than the unique E-Kind convertible weighed again within the day. It’s a formidable achievement, with the minimalist method extending to the black Alcantara-trimmed inside.
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
Light-weight racing seats with four-point harnesses, a subtly revised dashboard with magnetic telephone dock and even air-conditioning all serve to improve the driving expertise with out succumbing to OTT restomod styling.
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
In accordance with Eagle’s shopper, the automobile was supposed because the antithesis of the trendy efficiency automobile, with its advanced digital techniques and outrageous energy outputs. ‘I am undecided these vehicles will age very effectively, so I commissioned Eagle to construct me a automobile that’s as gentle as attainable with out sacrificing consolation, devoid of screens or different electronics,’ they are saying. ‘With unimaginable efficiency, long-distance consolation and timeless magnificence, I could not be happier with the consequence.’
Element design, Eagle Light-weight GTR
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
Element design, Eagle Light-weight GTR
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
Efficiency comes courtesy of an all-aluminium 4.7-litre straight-six with triple Weber carburettors, housed beneath the E-Kind’s signature forward-hinged bonnet. Bespoke suspension and carbon-ceramic brakes, in addition to using sturdy magnesium and titanium elements maintain weight down.
As a one-on-one expression of bespoke efficiency engineering, the Light-weight GTR will take some beating.
(Picture credit score: Dean Smith)
Extra particulars at Eagle E-Varieties, EagleGB.com, @Eagle.Etypes
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