Jensen International Automotive has unveiled the Interceptor GTX, a 960 bhp supercharged V8 grand tourer whose aluminum body was hand-formed using ten English wheels — a metal-shaping tool that has been curving car panels since roughly the 1930s. The car is Jensen's first clean-sheet design and previews an entirely new Interceptor lineup.
The English wheel is a large metal hoop with a roller at its center. Sheet metal is pushed through it by hand until it curves into the desired shape. It is the kind of equipment usually associated with a blacksmith's shed rather than a workshop targeting 1,200 horsepower. Yet Coventry Metalcraft used exactly that tool, alongside laptops running computational fluid dynamics software, to form the GTX's body panels. More than 30 artisans worked the ten English wheels, shaping every piece the old-fashioned way while working from digital surfaces refined through simulation.
The design comes from Avant Design, a studio based in Royal Leamington Spa. Its task was to translate the proportions of the original 1966 Interceptor into something contemporary rather than costume-like. The long bonnet survives, as does the tightly drawn greenhouse and the wraparound rear glass that made the original so distinctive, though a towering rear wing now partially blocks the view of it. The front end is new, with slim horizontal LED lighting and enormous carbon intakes replacing the old car's chrome-heavy face.
This is not Avant's first attempt at reimagining the same silhouette. In 2023, the studio published a concept called the E-Ceptor, an electric take on the Interceptor with reworked rear glazing and a fresh grille graphic. The GTX effectively took that speculative sketch and gave it a supercharged V8 instead of a battery pack.
The choice of aluminum for both chassis and body was not driven by sentiment. David Duerden, Jensen International's managing director, explained plainly why the GTX skipped carbon fiber entirely. He does not want the car riding like «a skateboard,» a concern given how punishing a stiff carbon tub can feel on roads meant for a Sixties grand tourer rather than a modern track special. Aluminum chassis structures are also considerably cheaper to produce in small batches because they avoid the expensive tooling that carbon fiber demands before a single panel is made. For a car expected to sell in the dozens rather than the thousands, that economic math matters more than bragging rights about carbon weave.
That same logic is why the English wheel earns its keep. Hand-forming panels sidesteps the tooling costs that would sink a low-volume carbon fiber program before it ever reached a customer. Coventry Metalcraft's artisans still shape each piece by hand, but they are guided by digital surfaces that Avant Design refined using CFD modeling, chasing the 350 kilograms of downforce the GTX needs to behave at speed.
The result is a genuinely unusual combination: a forming technique roughly ninety years old paired with simulation software that did not exist when the original Interceptor left the Kelvin Way factory. Jensen is betting its entire comeback on that combination holding together. From what has been shown so far, the approach appears to be working.