Jaguar E-Type Special Editions » Eagle Low Drag GT » Eagle Low Drag GT - Reaction » Eagle Low Drag GT Review - The Mail on Sunday
So if your six numbers do come up, instead of a house, why not consider treating yourself to this week’s car, the Eagle Low Drag GT?
For she is indeed a flawless example of engineering excellence. If you do, by the way, you’ll be only the second owner of one of these sublime creations. She must have taken forever to build. To behold this car is to behold automotive nirvana.
Based on the Malcolm Sayer E-Type from the early 1960s, but not a recreation (this being the genius of the project), she’s Eagle’s latest take on a vision from the past colliding head on with the technology of the present. The result: a-mazing.
Of course, Eagle, which specialises in restoring E-Types, has done this before with the Speedster, and to great effect, but – whoa! – the Low Drag GT incarnation takes us into a whole new realm of Dreamsville.
Aluminium (almost) everything, including the engine and gearbox, reduces her weight by over 30 per cent – a huge amount when it comes to enhancing performance, which is borne out by stats such as 0-60 in less than five seconds and a top speed of over 170mph.
That said, her pièce de résistance is her ability to dance even with the most inelegant of partners – ie, moi. This is what strikes you from the moment you plonk your derrière in the driver’s seat. She’s so fluid, so gentle, so willing and forgiving. Like an angel compared to a nightclub bouncer.
Her long gears and heaps of torque inspire the lucky driver to forget about getting too busy with the gearstick and look way off into the distance to plot his next glide around a bend. There is some danger to her, however, in as much as one needs to be prepared for the effect the sight of her gleaming, super-sexy, all-aluminium silver body arrowing through the countryside will have on innocent bystanders.
She doesn’t so much turn heads as threaten to snap them clean off the necks of their owners.
There’s a couple of things I would have done differently, mind you, like going for a traditional carb set-up as opposed to the fuel-injection system the owner of this first model has opted for. And I wouldn’t have bothered with the graduated-power-steering package either. I don’t think she needs them, and they ever so slightly take away from the visceral experience of her letting you know who and what she truly is.
But hey, I’m only nitpicking, and the man who pays the greenbacks should get exactly what he wants regardless. Especially when we’re talking well north of half a million pounds. That’s right. Say it slowly and it’s even worse. A load of dough in anybody’s book, which makes the Low Drag GT the most expensive car I’ve tested to date.
Now, about those numbers from last night...