“It blows my mind when I see what others do here. It’s like magic”

If craftsmanship takes time, welcome to the place where time stands still. In many ways, Eagle is a time capsule. It celebrates trades and skills that we assume are dying out. And highlights precisely why they deserve to survive. Here you will find masters of every art of car building, from panel beaters and metal workers to painters and mechanics.

In many ways, Ali Leeves has the most responsible job of the lot. Up in the upholstery room, hers is the last job to be done. She works on cars that have already been lavished with thousands of hours of work, where one tool slip could gouge the lustrous paint. And when her work is done, it’s her leatherwork, fabrics and stitching that owners will be constantly exposed to as they drive their cars.

If this affects her, she doesn’t show it. After 18 years upholstering one off pieces of furniture, she found her way to Eagle four years ago. “I saw it advertised and thought ‘not really my bag’, but then I looked at the company, then came and had a look around and I was hooked.”

Photography: Huckleberry Mountain

Her job entails not just trimming the entire cabin and boot (a task that typically takes months for each car), but also potentially advising customers on their choices. “We had a customer who was absolutely adamant on the colours he wanted for his car and they were, um... quirky. We couldn’t quite necessarily see it, but we pulled it together by toning the colours and adding some fabric and made it work. I also suggested a little surprise, a paisley trimmed glovebox as it kind of went with the theme. And he loved it.”

The car Ali is working on now is the most bespoke commission Eagle has ever undertaken. A Lightweight GT that more than lives up to its name, it boasts myriad titanium components, plus inlaid mother of pearl buttons with platinum surrounds on the dash. Much of the interior is quilted, including the Alcantara headlining, stitched on an ancient Singer sewing machine. “I tend to use it for the thicker fabrics and leather because it just glides through that bit easier. I oil her once a year, but she tells me. She gets a little bit cranky.

“I do really like doing headlining. One of the bits I miss from furniture upholstery is getting the pattern matching exactly right with a plaid or tartan where everything had to try to tally and match.” 

The results are sensational – every Eagle interior TG has seen seems to glow with inner health and radiance

Worst part to trim? “Urgh, doing the underdash, upside down in the footwell, trying to avoid glue falling on your face. Not my idea of fun. The biggest challenge is jobs where you only have one go at something. So, for example, gluing the neoprene onto the door sills – it’s got to be stretched properly, there can’t be any air bubbles. That’s tricky.” Ali confesses it did once go wrong, “and cleaning and stripping it all back was a nightmare”.

The workshop smells of leather, great hides hanging on racks, rolls of fabric under the worktops, reels of thread and draws full of interesting tools: punches, hammers, needles and scissors... “I can get quite miffed if people pick up scissors and I don’t know what they’re going to use them for. No, you are not picking up those and cutting paper with them when those are for leather or fabric. These are my favourite,” she says, picking up a pair with leather tied around a handle. “I think that just makes them fit me. They have different weights to them, and their own quirks.”

None of the tools in here look new or state of the art. Most have a heft that suggests the tool would guide the hand as much as vice versa. There’s no laser cutter for the leather, no computer to work out the most efficient, economical use of a hide. But equally there’s no wastage, as scraps are saved and sent to schools.

Hundreds of pieces of trim, fabric, foam, leather, material, neoprene and each has to be perfectly cut, prepared, trimmed, mounted, stitched and made, well, perfect. All done by hand and eye. The results are sensational – every Eagle interior Top Gear has seen seems to glow with inner health and radiance.

So how would Ali spec hers? “It would be a Low Drag, to me they are the most beautiful. Not easy to work on, especially in that pinched area behind the seats. And personally I don’t think you can go wrong with a classic navy exterior and mid-tan interior... but having said that, when something like this mixes it up you go, ‘actually...’.”

Just four cars a year leave this quiet, scrupulously clean, tucked away yard in a remote corner of the High Weald. “Do we realise how good we are? I think you take your own discipline for granted, but it blows my mind when I see what others do here. It’s like magic.”