2005 Jaguar S-type Sport Sedan 4-door 4.2l V8 Vanden Plas Edition on 2040-cars

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Eagle Lightweight GT meticulous Jaguar restomod is 'the best an E-Type can be'

England claims so many boutique, specialist car companies doing such sensational work that if an artist were to draw a national muse for Britannia, she would hold a scepter in one hand and a gear shift in the other. Next up in the island's crowded showroom of posh vehicular gems, Eagle presents its Lightweight GT. The slinky coupe started as a Series 1 Jaguar E-Type (built from 1961 to 1968), then, after 8,000 hours of work in the chrysalis of Eagle's East Sussex workshops, the coupe emerges as a modern and much more comfortable version of Jaguar's factory Lightweight racers from 1963. Some context: After Jaguar stepped away from racing in the late 1950s, the company decided to convert 25 incomplete D-Type chassis into the road-legal XKSS roadster. Come 1962, with the D-Type and competition still on its mind, Jaguar toyed with its new E-Type road car to create the Low Drag Coupe for competition. The factory built just one, powered by a mightier version of the 3.8-liter straight-six in the E-Type that used a wide-angle cylinder head designed for the D-Type. The next year, Jaguar's racing fancy expressed itself in the E-Type Lightweight, still harking back to the D-Type with all-aluminum bodywork and an aluminum block for the 3.8-liter. The automaker planned to fabricate 18 Lightweights, but only got around to building 12. The Lightweights didn't dominate any of the big races, but privateers put them to effective use in smaller series. Their pedigree, aura, and multi-million-dollar valuations convinced Ford to debut an Advanced Lightweight Coupe Concept at the 2005 Geneva Motor Show, and in 2014 convinced Jaguar to complete the six remaining cars in the 18-car build.      Enter Eagle. After its Speedster, Low Drag GT and Spyder GT, the firm calls the Lightweight GT the answer to the question, "What’s the best an E-Type can be?" The hand-formed aluminum skin takes 2,500 hours to shape, revised slightly for better aerodynamics and comfort. A deeper ramp angle in front leads to deeper side sills, which bolster chassis stiffness, and with a lower floorpan, put the driver lower in the car and give him more headroom. Larger wheel arches fit 16-inch magnesium alloy versions of the peg-drive wheel Dunlop introduced in 1954, an inch larger than the wheels on the original Lightweights, and aluminum, three-eared knock-offs. There's steeper rake to the windshield and backlight.

Top Gear caught filming Best of British near Buckingham Palace

YouTuber and car-fan extraordinaire Shmee probably had very little trouble tracking down the Top Gear film crew recently, as the group was putting together an episode that could accurately be described as "excessive." With its flag-waving (literally) Best of British theme, the TG guys gathered a jaw-dropping array of British cars, and parked them all right in front of Buckingham Palace to make extra sure that the point was driven home.
Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May were outfitted with a trio of Jaguar F-Types festooned with gigantic Union Jacks, with which to survey the landscape of British motoring glory. In the video below, you'll see that this includes any number of Mini, Aston Martin, Lotus, McLaren, Land Rover, Bentley and Rolls-Royce models (just to name a few), as well as a healthy dose of weird stuff that most people would never guess at being built in the UK. The lawnmowers and military vehicles are especially cool.

Jaguar Land Rover in talks for Southern US factory

Jaguar Land Rover is getting serious about global expansion, and that means it can't only build its vehicles in the UK anymore. The British automaker is cutting the ribbon at its new plant in China tomorrow, marking the opening of its first factory outside the UK. In 2016, it will open another factory in Brazil. But the latest intel has it that JLR is looking into a US factory, as well.
The report, which comes to us from the Sunday Times by way of Automotive News Europe, indicates that the company is evaluating locations for a North American factory, with options centering around Southern right-to-work states like South Carolina, where BMW operates its plant in Spartanburg and a wide array of other automotive operations are based as well. The JLR plant would reportedly ramp up to a capacity of 200,000 units per year.
In related news, while that new plant JLR is inaugurating in Changshu, China, is initially slated to produce the Range Rover Evoque, it is also expected to start building the new Discovery Sport as well - just like the Halewood plant in the UK that has handled Evoque assembly from the start and which just built its first Discovery Sport, as well.