LOW FLYING

When a customer challenged Eagle to build a sub-1000kg race-inspired road car, it kicked off an obsessive weight-saving drive that's resulted in one of the greatest E-types we've ever driven

- David Lillywhite

I found my notes from a 2019 drive of Eagle's sublime mid-blue E-type Lightweight GT.

‘We could have pushed for sub-1000kg but that would have meant doing without the air-con or soundproofing,’ the company’s long-time technical director Paul Brace said at the time. And yet here we are in Wales on a stunning October day with the brand-new Eagle E-type Lightweight GTR, which weighs (wait for it...) 930kg dry, or 975kg with all its fluids. That’s 2050 and 2150lb for non-metric types, and over 30% lighter than a standard E-type Roadster. And guess what? It has air-con and soundproofing and even higher peak power than the Lightweight GT.

Does it matter? Yes and no. The lower the weight of any car, the better the performance, the ride, the braking, the handling... everything. Weight loss doesn’t have to be as extreme as the Lightweight GTR's to make for an entertaining machine, but what we love about this car is the obsessive attention to detail – and, I now know, the way it drives on some of the UK’s greatest roads.

Without wanting to come over like a fan-boy, this is what Eagle has been doing since 1991: carrying out considered engineering changes to one of the most iconic cars of all time, making them better to drive and own. Jaguar obsessive Henry Pearman had been restoring and maintaining E-types under the Eagle banner since 1984, and in 1991 created a subtly upgraded version for a customer who wanted a driving experience as good as the car's looks promised.