Another raced weather replica is coming from the Amalgam team. This one is featuring the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type (LWE) 1963 Le Mans #15, drivers Briggs Cunningham and Bob Grossman. This limited production of only 5 provides some serious punch and full 360 access too. More than 3500 hours of R&D go into each project and each piece is hand-built right down to the weathering. A+ on execution and style, C- on price. This piece will set you back approx. $20,000 US. Nuts!
About the Jaguar E-type… “The Jaguar E-type was never meant to race. Its sweeping bodywork certainly took inspiration from the sleek aerodynamic profiles of the racing C-types and D-types, and its monocoque chassis and disc brakes had been race-honed at Le Mans, but the E-type’s innovative independent rear suspension was designed to be B-road friendly, while the 3.8-litre straight-six XK engine was tuned to be easier to drive at low speed. As demand for E-types outstripped production capacity at the Jaguar Brown’s Lane factory, there was little need for the E-type to go racing. Indeed, road car production took priority over a return to motorsport.
In 1961 though, the FIA created a GT category for production sports cars into which the E-type fit perfectly. Lacking the time and resources to build a dedicated competition sports car from scratch, Jaguar hatched a plan to build an ultra-lightweight E-type using aluminum panels and a modified lighter version of the XK engine, with an aluminum block in place of the regular cast-iron. The Lightweight E-type’s design was partly inspired by an early one-off ‘Low-drag Coupé’ concept that had been created in 1962 by Jaguar’s pioneering aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer. It used aluminum panels to reduce weight, which was riveted and glued to the monocoque to improve chassis stiffness. The aerodynamics were optimized, with a fast rake to the windscreen and an even more curvaceous form than the standard E-type at the rear, while the interior was stripped of all unneeded comfort features. Every piece of glass, except the windscreen, was replaced with Plexiglas. In 1963, Jaguar committed to a limited run of Lightweight E-types, using even more aluminum in the body and a lightweight aluminum block for the race-spec 350bhp 3.8-litre XK engine. This time the car was based on an E-type convertible, with a coupé hardtop fitted as standard. The imminent arrival of the Lightweight E-type worried great rival Enzo Ferrari so much that he immediately commissioned the lighter and more powerful Ferrari 250 GTO. At the time, only 12 of the planned 18 cars were built. Jaguar would decide to build the six remaining cars, finally utilizing their unused chassis codes, in 2014.”
Product# TBD
