Callum’s Love Letter to the Jaguar E-Type: Classic Curves, Modern Mischief
By Team Dailyrevs May 17, 2025
You Don’t Tinker with Icons — Unless You’re Ian Callum
If you were to list the most dangerous cars to mess with, the Jaguar E-Type would be right up there. Revered by purists, protected by history, and immortalised by Enzo Ferrari himself as “the most beautiful car ever made,” it's not something you casually restyle over a long weekend. But that hasn’t stopped Ian Callum, former Jaguar design director and the man responsible for the Aston Martin DB9, the Jaguar F-Type, and half of your automotive wall posters, from doing exactly that. The result? A restomod E-Type that feels more like a design essay than a product — a rolling question posed with conviction: What if the E-Type had quietly evolved through the decades?
Retro, But Rewired — With Taste
Rather than reinterpreting it with heavy-handed modernity, Callum’s approach is light and deliberate. The 2025 concept sheds chrome in favor of finesse. The bumpers are tucked away, the indicators now float in slimline housings, and the bonnet flows more cleanly into the grille, which itself has been ever-so-slightly revised. It’s still unmistakably E-Type — but sharper, more athletic, like the original’s smarter cousin who studied design in Milan.
A Cabin That Belongs in a Museum, Not a Time Machine
Step inside and things take a turn — not for the futuristic, but for the refined. The red leather is sumptuous without being gaudy, the sculpted seats are snug and purposeful, and the centerpiece? A transparent floating console that looks like it drifted down from an art gallery ceiling. There’s no screen overload here, just a rethinking of how tactile and visually satisfying a cabin can be. You don’t interact with it like tech; you engage with it like sculpture.
Callum’s Poker Face on the Powertrain
Powertrain details haven’t been locked down, but the speculation game is strong. There’s talk of a naturally aspirated inline-six, a potential V8, even whispers of a V12 — all manual, all internal combustion. Callum himself remains coy, calling it “a concept,” but there’s intent behind that vagueness. You don’t design a throttle pedal if you’re not hoping someone will floor it someday.
Not a Singer, Not a Tribute — Something Stranger
What’s refreshing is the restraint. This isn’t a Singer-style hyperbuild designed to outdo the original in every measurable way. It’s not about carbon fiber panels, overbuilt suspension, or turning it into a track weapon. Callum’s E-Type is about feeling. Proportion. Simplicity. It's not trying to fix the past; it’s gently asking how the past might have matured had it not been frozen in time.
Will It Be Built? That’s Not Really the Point
And no, there’s no production plan — at least, not publicly. But that might be the point. This car wasn’t built for market research or TikTok buzz. It’s a portfolio piece for the soul. A statement. A reminder that design, when done right, doesn’t age — it adapts. And sometimes, the most daring move isn’t to invent something new, but to revisit something sacred with the care and audacity it deserves.
Why It Matters More Than It Should
So, will we ever see one on the road? Maybe. But even if we don’t, the Callum E-Type has already done its job. It’s made us look again at a car we thought we already understood — and fall for it all over again.