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Driving Jaguar's Continuation Lightweight E-Type

Something has happened to sports cars over the past 15-20 years. While reaching ever-higher levels of quantitative dominance the driving experience continues to become more sterile. Stability control, torque vectoring, variable electronic steering racks, lightning-quick dual-clutch automatic transmissions – all these make it easier to harness more power and drive faster than ever before. And yet too often it feels like something is missing. There is a growing divide between the capabilities of the modern performance car and the driver's sense of connection to the experience. In an era like the one we're in now, the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type hits you like a slap in the face. The story of the Lightweight E-Type goes back to 1963, when Jaguar set aside eighteen chassis numbers for a run of "Special GT E-Type" cars. These were factory-built racers with aluminum bodies, powered by the aluminum-block, 3.8-liter inline-six found in Jaguar's C- and D-Type LeMans racecars of the 1950s. Of the eighteen cars slated for production, only twelve were built and delivered to customers in 1964. For the next fifty years, those last six chassis numbers lay dormant, until their rediscovery a couple of years ago in a book in Jaguar's archives. In an era like the one we're in now, the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type hits you like a slap in the face. Jaguar Heritage, a section of Jaguar Land Rover's new Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) division, took on the task of researching the original Lightweight E-Types and developing the methods to create new ones. Every aspect of the continuation Lightweight E-Type, from the development of the tools and molds used to build the cars, to the hand-craftsmanship, reflects doing things the hard way. They may not build them like they used to, but with these six special E-Types, Jaguar comes awfuly close, if not better. Working alongside the design team, Jaguar Heritage made a CAD scan of one side of an original Lightweight E-Type body. That scan was flipped to create a full car's worth of measurements. That ensured greater symmetry and better fit than on the original Lightweight E-Types (which could see five to ten millimeter variance, left-to-right). The scan was also used to perfect the frame, while Jaguar looked through notes in its crash repair books to reverse-engineer the Lightweight E-Type's suspension. The team repurposed a lot of existing tooling for the continuation cars, and developed the rest from analysis of the CAD scan.

Jaguar may kill supercharged V6 to make way for inline-six

This could be the last year to score a Jaguar with the carmaker's 3.0-liter supercharged V6. Autocar reports that Jaguar deep-sixed the the XE S and XF S in the UK due to poor sales and difficulty coping with European emissions regulation changes taking place this year. The mag expects the XJ and F-Pace to lose the V6, too, but suspects the F-Type might retain the engine. It's possible, however, the bent-six with up to 380 horsepower and 339 pound-feet of torque might finally be retiring for a reason reported on for at least three years: To make way for a 3.0-liter inline-six from the Ingenium line of motors. In 2015, Motor Trend noted the supercharged V6 would die at the end of 2016, succeeded by a "more powerful Ingenium inline-six," likely to be turbocharged. One year later, Car laid out a new family of Ingenium inline-sixes in gasoline and diesel versions. There would be three gas options with 300, 400, and 500 horsepower, plus three diesels with 275, 335, and 400 hp and herds of torque. In Car's report, the engines were meant to be here in 2017. This could be the year it finally happens. A Jaguar spokesman in the UK told Autocar that an uptake of less than 2 percent on the S models, "Coupled with impending emissions regulation changes, it makes sense to remove these variants from sale in the UK." When Jalopnik asked Jaguar U.S. about availability here — we aren't a party to the imminent European emissions changes — the carmaker would only say that the engine remains available in the current XE, XF, XJ, F-Type and F-Pace. No matter the timeline, Jaguar would want a six-cylinder to fill the gap from the 296-hp Ingenium 2.0-liter four-cylinder to the supercharged 5.0-liter V8 that starts at 470 hp. Jaguar expanded an area of its Wolverhampton, UK, engine factory to build the scalable Ingenium line. An inline-six would not only reconnect with Jaguar's past — and the firm's long-hooded cars remain ready to swallow them — the straight-six is lighter, has fewer moving parts, and emits less pollution than the supercharged V6. It is also compatible with front-, rear- and all-wheel drive, longitudinal and transverse mounting, and hybrid applications, so expect to see the motor migrate to the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, and Land Rover Discovery.

Land Rover planning SVX hardcore off-roaders

The new Special Vehicle Operations division at Jaguar Land Rover has already given us an array of ultimate wheeled creations, but it isn't quite done yet. Next, according to Car and Driver, will be a new line of SVX models. Not to be confused with the Subaru coupe from the 1990s (which also had all-wheel drive, come to think of it), Land Rover's SVX models will be hardcore off-roaders. Details are few and far between at the moment, but they're said to take inspiration from rough-terrain events like the Dakar Rally and Camel Trophy as inspiration – different from the Ford F-150 Raptor that takes its cues from the Baja 1000. Last we heard, Land Rover was planning a hardcore Defender to send the model off to pasture in high-performance style, and considering an extreme Range Rover as well. If either of those rumors materialize, they look like they'd be prime candidates for the SVX line. JLR Special Vehicle Operations has already showcased what it can do with the high-performance Range Rover Sport SVR, the luxed-up Range Rover SVAutobiography, the exclusive F-Type Project 7 and the continuation classic Lightweight E-Type. C/D confirms that further SVR models are in store to replace Jaguar's R-S performance models, while the SVX line would likely remain exclusive to Land Rover.