Jaguar E-type Eagle Lightweight GT review: the most beautiful car in the world

I’m not going to beat about the bush here. It costs about $1.5m. But God almighty, it looks and sounds so good.

Eagle Lightweight GT,

Yes, I’m writing about cars again. There were a few months when I couldn’t get hold of any press demonstrators, and even if I could have done, there was nowhere I could go in them without being branded a Covidiot. But all that suddenly changed the other day when an all-electric Porsche Taycan Turbo arrived. You get two electric motors: one to the fore that drives the front wheels through a one-speed gearbox and one in the back that powers the rear wheels via a two-speed unit. In between is a raft of lithium-ion batteries and all the wiring needed to make such a complex machine work. The net result is this car weighs about the same as a medium-sized bungalow. Bloody hell, it’s fast, though. I can imagine a lot of Taycans will be crashed moments after the driver has turned to his passenger and said, with a big, idiotic grin on his face: “Right. Watch this.”

There’s another issue, too. In most electric cars, when you lift off the throttle energy from the motor is harnessed and fed back into the battery, so it’s like you’re braking. But when you lift off in the Taycan, it keeps going. It’s so aerodynamically efficient that not even the air will slow you down. You do get a button on the steering wheel that brings some regenerative braking to proceedings, and I found myself pushing that before I did up my seatbelt. And it really does raise a question. Do electric cars have to be this powerful and complicated?

My colleagues Richard Hammond and James May now have Teslas. Paul McGuinness, the former manager of U2, came for lunch recently and he had one, as did two people at dinner the night before. The bloody things are now so prolific in my world that to bring some carbon neutrality to the table I’ve had to order a V8 Bentley Flying Spur to go with my V8 Range Rovers.

Eagle Lightweight GT.

And it’s why I’m moving on to the meat of this morning’s missive. The extraordinary Jaguar E-type-based Eagle Lightweight GT made by a small engineering company in East Sussex, England. Eagle is best known for mild E-type tweaks, but occasionally it makes a car that stops the world. Remember the Speedster? The most beautiful thing made in all human history? That was an Eagle. Now it’s done it again.

I’m not going to beat about the bush here. It costs about $1.5m, and that’s a lot for a car that’s nearly 60 years old. But the truth is, it’s about 60 minutes old. If you look carefully you’ll note that the sills are lower, the indicators are flush, the doors are frameless and the windscreen is more raked than it was on the original 1963 E-type Lightweight. Under the bonnet it’s a straight-six, as you’d expect, but it’s a 4.7 litre unit made by Eagle from aluminium, with big valves and three Weber carburettors spoon-feeding the go-juice. The result is 283kW, and it seems to me, having been half scared to death by the Taycan, that this is a more sensible amount. Especially as very little is wasted in lugging around unnecessary weight. Everything is made from magnesium, titanium or aluminium. The result is a dry weight of 1017kg – less than me.

You’d imagine that it feels like a stripped-out racer, but no. It’s called the GT because it’s a grand tourer, a leather-lined, long-distance cruiser. It’s nothing like the original racers and nothing like the “continuation” cars Jaguar has made recently. It’s civilised, even by modern standards. The interior is a labour of love. It is a thing of beauty. Getting in is a bit of a pfaff, and getting out is harder, but that’s OK because I didn’t want to get out. I just wanted to sit in there, forever, touching stuff. Or driving it. The twin-choke Webers are a bit hard to coax into life, but once they’ve cleared their throats you get just the right amount of performance and just the right amount of grip, and you also get just the right amount of Tom Jones noises. God almighty, this thing sounds good.

Porsche has tried to tune the noises the Taycan makes but it still sounds like a golf buggy. They all do. That’s why I’ll never buy an electric car. You can drone on about how yours does a million miles between charges and how nothing but baby hedgehogs come out of its rear end, but when you put your foot down in a carb-fed straight-six, and that long bonnet rears up slightly, you know what’s missing from your motorised vacuum cleaner. The soundtrack. And when you lift your foot up again and you get all those little crackles and pops – ooh, it does things to your hair. The only way you could achieve something similar with your Tesla or your Taycan is if you put your tongue on the battery terminal.

But this debate comes down to something simpler. I want an E-type Eagle Lightweight GT so much that it keeps me awake at night. I do not want a Porsche Taycan Turbo.

-

Jaguar E-type Eagle Lightweight GT

Engine: 4.7-litre inline six-cylinder petrol (283kW/508Nm)

Transmission: Five-speed manual

Price: Made to order for about $1.5m

Rating: ★★★★