Florida X Type All Wheel Drive Awd 4x4 5 Speed Manual 79k Carfax Certified Cd on 2040-cars

Auto blog

This Jaguar D-Type is what you should spend your multimillion-dollar holiday bonus on

The end of the year is fast approaching, your holiday shopping is done, and the mutual fund you help manage is paying out some serious bonuses. What do you do with all that sweet cash? Well, if it's over seven figures, we suggest hanging on to it until January when it could help you buy this amazing 1954 Jaguar D-Type race car. The D-Type, for those of you unfamiliar, is Jaguar's famous race car that gave birth to the road-going XKSS, one of which was owned by Steve McQueen. The D-Type was known for its successes on the track, and frequent appearances at Le Mans, with a victory at the endurance race in 1956. This particular car also raced there in 1954 with the Jaguar factory team, and behind the wheel was Sir Stirling Moss. According to RM Sotheby's, it led the race for a major chunk, but eventually retired due to brake issues. The car was campaigned at other events through the year, and it also saw time at the hands of a privateer team that bought the car in 1955. Many decades later, the car is being offered for public sale for the first time in its life at the RM Sotheby's auction in Arizona, Jan. 18-19. According to the auction company, the car features the original body, chassis, drivetrain and suspension. Between the history and the originality, the company is expecting the car to bring between $12 million and $15 million, hence the reason this is probably just for those with seriously massive holiday bonuses. But if you have the means, you could do way worse than spending it on this Jaguar. Related Video: Featured Gallery 1954 Jaguar D-Type View 33 Photos Image Credit: Patrick Ernzen Courtesy of RM Sotheby's Jaguar Auctions Convertible Racing Vehicles Classics jaguar d-type jaguar xkss

2016 Jaguar F-Type debuts available manual transmission, AWD

If you're like us, you fell in the deepest, darkest sort of love with Jaguar's F-Type the moment its voluptuous form first surfaced. The car's full-bodied engine specs only furthered our ardor, and the droptop Jag sealed the deal before we even turned a wheel - all it took was hearing its engine bark to life.
And yet, even after driving the original convertible and the subsequent coupe, we've never quite shaken the notion that Jaguar erred a bit too heavily on the Grand Touring side of the equation for a proper sports car. That's partially because even the base model comes with a boatload of weight-adding luxury features. But perhaps more importantly, it's because the F-Type has only been available with an automatic transmission. Admittedly, the gearbox in question is a damned good paddle-shifted eight-speed ZF unit, but it's always chafed a bit that Jaguar wasn't committed to offering purists a manual - even if such a model would never be a high-volume proposition.
Apparently we weren't the only ones bothered by three-pedal omission. According to Russ Varney, F-Type Vehicle Program Director,

Who picks car colors and materials? Designers like Hannah Custance

As automotive journalists, we're often asked "how did you get that job?" People usually didn't even know you could do such a thing. In this 7 Questions series, we're highlighting other jobs in the automotive industry that you might not have heard about before. What do they do, how'd they get to do it and other questions about their particular corner of the car world. Slowly but surely, the automotive landscape is becoming more colorful. Look beyond the unrelentingly conservative palette of white, black and gray most buyers opt for and you'll see the increased use of exterior trim types beyond the usual chrome. There's gloss black, of course, but also other metallic finishes like gold or copper. Those can be found inside, too, where there's also an increase in colorful leathers and trims, innovative fabrics, new wood types and finishes, and greater creativity in general. So where is this change coming from? The answer is designers like Hannah Custance, the color and materials design manager for Jaguar Land Rover. Her team's latest effort is also its magnum opus, the 2022 Range Rover. Although saddled with the expectations that comes with one of the automotive industry's classic nameplates, the all-new Range Rover is also a celebration of cutting edge manufacturing and fashion-forward materials selection. We sat down with Hannah at the L.A. Auto Show to find out more about color and materials designers, how she ended up in the industry, and advice she might have for young designers out there. It has been condensed for brevity. Autoblog: What does a color and materials design manager to do?Hannah Custance: I basically look after a team of designers who design finishes for every A surface on the car. So, that could be exterior finishes. It could be interior trim materials, soft materials, hard materials, chromes, metals, woods, ceramic – that's one of the new ones – anything you can kind of touch and see is color material design. Autoblog: How early in the design process does your team become involved.Hannah: Right at the very start. In fact, we look at materials that don't have a product assigned to them or a car assigned to them. So, it takes actually a very long time for us to get materials approved and fully validated. We have to find suppliers that are willing to work in automotive and our test standards are incredibly high, some of the highest in the industry.