Eagle History displayed at Royal Tunbridge Wells Festival of Motoring

 Photography by Laurie Southern and Freddie Atkins

The 2025 Tunbridge Wells Festival of Motoring marked the 130th anniversary of the country’s first car event, the 1895 Horseless Carriage Exhibition, held in Tunbridge Wells. The event showcased local specialists and told the story of the rich automotive industry in the local area. Featured cars ranged from a 1903 De Dion Bouton to the Jota Sports 2025 Cadillac V-Series.R hypercar fresh from this years Le Mans 24 hour race. The cars were displayed throughout the picturesque cobbled streets of the prestigious Pantiles area. 

We showcased two extremely important cars to tell the Eagle story. The first was our E-type ‘Marathon Car’, our founder Henry Pearman bought this car in 1987 at the age of just 24, and after some light upgrades he entered it into the 1988 Pirelli Classic Marathon. Incredibly, with co-driver (and still TWMC’s comp. secretary) Duncan Welch, they finished 5th overall. This was an amazing result but Henry was hooked and keen to return and try to improve the following year.

For 1989 he was joined by the late Gordon Cruickshank - already well known, being the Deputy Editor of Motorsport magazine and incredibly the duo won the Marathon outright. The two relatively unknown (in international rallying circles) brits had beaten motorsport legends such as Stirling Moss, Paddy Hopkirk, Roger Clark and Timo Mäkinen, some in ex works machinery! This win highlighted the E-type’s capability and launched Eagle’s E-Type expertise into the limelight, paving the way for their later development of E-Type upgrades and special editions.

Aside from its international rallying successes, the Marathon car has also proved to be an important test bed for the development of new Eagle upgrades. As a result it has since been fitted with a host of high spec Eagle performance upgrades that have been developed over the years. At almost 40 years of ownership, the Marathon car is the longest standing member of the Eagle collection!

The second car was of course the Eagle Speedster, this model formed the start of a new chapter for Eagle and has become synonymous with the brand. The first Speedster was a special commission for an American client who requested something even more special than our usual bespoke restored Jaguar E-Types. Handed over to the new owner by Martin Brundle in 2009, there was such great interest in the Speedster that we decided to complete a similar example for ourselves and to celebrate the E-type’s 50th birthday in 2011. This then led to our further ultra-bespoke Eagle special editions, such as the Low Drag GT, Spyder GT and Lightweight GT.

Speedster No.2 has spent its fair share of time on the big screens, it was the car that Jeremy Clarkson drove in the now iconic Top Gear episode, it featured in the Fast and Furious 6 film and most recently featured in a short film for Glenmorangie whisky driven by Harrison Ford! This exact car was also photographed and scanned to be included in the Forza Horizon game franchise.

Our two cars were in fantastic company on the top terrace alongside a D-type of CKL Developments and a Bugatti Type 35 and Mercedes W125 Grand Prix car recommission courtesy of Crosthwaite and Gardiner.

The event held across the weekend highlighted each of the local specialists with interview sessions held on the famous bandstand delving further into the rich automotive history of the local area.