Lightweight Jaguar E-Type driven

The cars, all sold, cost about £1 million each – small beer against recent auction prices achieved for members of the original dozen, 11 of which survive. 

My own Lightweight E-Type tour started in workshops at Whitley normally reserved for the creation of super-secret prototypes. There, Callum and project manager Chris Burdett explained how several standard E-Types (whose original drawings were long gone) were measured, digitised and corrected for the bumps and bulges that were usual in the 1960s.

The left-hand side of a traditional E-Type was found to be the best, so it was scanned and reversed to form the right-hand side. Resin tools were made and production began, with only a handful of the car’s 340 components being made by outside suppliers. Work began at the start of 2014 and so far a prototype (Car Zero) and the first production car are finished. The second is in trim and final assembly at Browns Lane, the third is being built and all will be complete by Christmas.

The challenge, Burdett explains, has been to recreate the Lightweight E-Types using traditional materials and joining methods so that these can be fairly claimed to be true members of the Lightweight family, fulfilling FIA stipulations so they can be homologated as ‘period’ racing cars. Old-style rivets hold the panels together. The aluminium is as close as possible to the aluminium of 1963. 

The engine is a dry-sumped, wide-angle-headed, alloy-blocked 3868cc XK straight six, as used in period by Lightweights but recently built by the East Sussex-based engineering firm Crosthwaite & Gardiner.

Customers can order it either with triple twin-throat Weber carburettors or with period Lucas mechanical fuel injection as an option. Power? Jaguar’s blurb talks about “well over 300bhp” on carbs, but those close to the project talk of 340bhp at 6000rpm (and a 6000rpm redline) with 280lb ft of torque at 4500rpm if, as in Car Zero, the engine has fuel injection. 

The gearbox is Jaguar’s ‘new for 1964’ all-synchromesh four-speeder. The wheels are familiar-looking centre-lock 15in alloys in rough-cast magnesium, 7.0in wide up front and 8.0in at the rear, wearing Dunlop CR65 race tyres, whose tread pattern is every bit as iconic as the car’s shape. 

On the Navarra circuit, 90 minutes south-east of Bilbao in northern Spain, I was allowed five laps each in two new-generation Lightweights, Car Zero and Car One, both to feel the difference between Weber and Lucas fuelling and to experience a fully finished car as an owner will do. 

These are small, beautiful cars, with exposed rivets that remind you of the Spitfire age. The doors are tiny but the cockpit, entirely untrimmed, has a fairly familiar E-Type instrument and dashboard layout, with a turn-key start and a row of toggle switches beneath, one of which activates the electric pumps that push fuel from the superb alloy tank, fed by a huge flip-top filler (and with a secret modern bag tank within, for safety reasons).

Press an old-style button, not one of today’s dinner-plate editions, and the engine erupts, shaking the car because it’s solidly mounted into the E-Type’s oddball structure, a frontal spaceframe that joins a monocoque at the firewall. 

The engine blips with zero delay between foot movement and exhaust blast. The seat feels low and comfortable as you plug the gearlever into first, then notice surprising softness in the clutch as you move away. First gear is very tall; give it some revs or you’ll stall. To the modern driver, both engine versions need clearing if allowed to dawdle in the mid-ranges, but the fuel-injected one runs marginally more smoothly. 

When given their head, both versions pull lustily. The whole car weighs only 1000kg, so 340bhp really makes it go once it hits its stride. It’s not a quick 0-60mph car, because of the tall first gear, but from about 30mph the ratios, although few, seem closely enough stacked to suit the torque.

The brakes, 12.25in unassisted discs up front and standard E-Type discs behind, feel distinctly vintage in the way you have to jump on the pedal to generate initial bite but quite secure once you get the hang of it. The steering, unassisted rack and pinion, is the soul of directness via a huge, wood-rimmed wheel with a proper Jaguar motif in the middle. 

However, beyond the beauty or the power or the steering is this Lightweight E’s wonderful handling balance. This is not a high-grip car in modern terms, although of course it has plenty of roadholding compared with conventional road cars. But the joy of driving it is in the beautiful balance, the feeling of zero roll in such a narrow car, and the grace of its transition into an old-style drift. You corner this Lightweight E on the edge of oversteer, yet never with anything as low-rent as tail-happiness.