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Jaguar Land Rover and Chery investing in Chinese plant

While the European auto market for Jaguar and Land Rover is waning, Chinese car buyers can't get enough of the British marques. To meet that demand, Tata Motors, parent company of Jag and Land Rover, is partnering with Chinese automaker Chery Automobile Co.
The two announced plans to invest $1.75 billion to build a new plant and create a new, China-focused brand. 2014 is the target for completion of the factory. Jaguars and Land Rovers built at the facility will be the first ever produced outside the UK according to the Associated Press. The JV will be called Chery Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Company Ltd.
The announcement comes less than a month after JLR announced it would open a design studio in China. It's not clear from the reports whether the two announcements are part of the same JV or two separate plans.

Jaguar F-Pace prototype goes to work at the Nurburgring

Jaguar is hard at work again, testing its upcoming F-Pace crossover. And here's our latest look at the prototype testing at the Nurburgring. The tester spotted here appears the same as the one we recently saw undergoing cold-weather development, only this time it's wearing summer rubber on fullsize wheels instead of winter tires on smaller ones. It's also missing the old prototype's auxiliary lights, and a bit more camouflage covering the quarter panels. The fact that it was seen on the Nordschleife, however, bodes well for the F-Pace and speaks to its orientation: Jaguar's first crossover promises to be geared towards performance, a sort of on-road counterpart to the off-road prowess of the SUVs offered by its sister brand Land Rover. We're looking forward to seeing the finished product at the Frankfurt Motor Show in the fall, but in the meantime you can scope out the spy shots in the slideshow above.

Watch a Jaguar F-Type R drag a parachute at 186 mph

With carbon-ceramic brakes on offer, the Jaguar F-Type R Coupe can shed off speed even faster than it can rack it up. Even the standard steel rotors do a pretty good job of it. But what would happen if you deployed a parachute out the back of the Jag at 186 miles per hour, like you might with a drag racer? That's what the British automaker has found out in this latest video. And just why would they do such a thing, you ask? Because Bloodhound, that's why. Jaguar is providing technical support to the Bloodhound SSC land speed record attempt, and one of the roles into which the F-Type has been pressed is to check the parachute that will (along with the air brakes and rotors) form an integral part of the jet- and rocket-powered vehicle's run. To make sure the chute would do its job, the team put Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green behind the wheel of the specially equipped F-Type at the RAF air base in Bentwaters, Suffolk, UK, had him speed down the runway up to the car's top speed and deploy the chute. Fortunately, as you can see from the minute-long clip, everything seemed to have gone according to plan – though we're not sure about the logic behind the assertion that if "it worked at 180, it will definitely work at a thousand miles an hour." Related Video: Jaguar F-TYPE Performs Mission Critical Parachute Deployment Test for British World Land Speed Record Challenger Bloodhound SSC 12 June 2015 - World land speed record holder Andy Green drives an F-TYPE R Coupe at top speed of 186mph to test Bloodhound SSC's parachute deployment system - The test continues Jaguar's technical partnership in the world land speed record attempt, following a high-speed communications test run in South Africa in 2014 - Jaguar will be at the heart of Bloodhound SSC providing its 5.0-litre 550PS supercharged V8 engine to power the rocket's oxidiser pump Today, Jaguar and the world land speed record holder RAF Wing Commander Andy Green performed vital high-speed parachute tests as part of the company's on-going technical support for this unique engineering adventure: creating a car that can cover a mile in just 3.6 seconds. The jet and rocket powered car, which aims to surpass the current record of 763.035mph before targeting 1000mph, has multiple braking systems including air-brakes ('doors' mounted on the side of the car which open to increase aerodynamic drag) and disc brakes (used when slowing down from 200mph).