2000 Coupe In Red/white on 2040-cars

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We drove to the Grand Tour Lapland taping in a British beater

In October, it was revealed that the Great British Motoring Show That Is Not Top Gear was going to be filming an episode somewhere in Finland. I happen to be Finnish, which meant I immediately applied for audience tickets, and then waited for the phone to ring. It never did, but a friend of mine got two tickets of his own. By that time it was announced that the filming was going to take place "somewhere in Lapland", and more precisely hundreds of kilometers north from the Arctic Circle. Excellent! We knew just how to get there. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Last summer, we spent GBP1000 ($1230 as of the publishing date) on a running and driving, British Racing Green Daimler Six on eBay and drove it home to Finland the long way, via Scotland. (In America, this car is known as the Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas.) It was still a little bit road legal in early November, as we had attempted to get it through Finnish import inspection. It failed on the grounds of the rocker panel welds being a bit crusty, but the following one-month grace and repair period meant we could still drive it on temporary sticker plates. So, after buying a set of Nokian winter tires the previous week, we set off from Helsinki the day before the filming. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. There is nothing quite like driving the entire length of Finland in a right-hand-drive four-liter rebadged Jaguar in one day – still on British plates, albeit taped over. We clocked up over 1100km in the comfort of the leather interior, whisked away by the four-liter six's oomphy torque and ambient thrum; every now and then stopping for fuel, swapping drivers and wiping the headlights clean from accumulating highway muck. As we passed Rovaniemi and the Santa's Village, roads gradually got so slippery the Nokians really proved their worth. Reindeer flocked on the road, along with foxes and the single white rabbit (he did not have a pocket watch, as far as we could tell). It was not the lack of sleep doing us in, even if the hotel bed was sorely needed after finally reaching the village of Saariselka in deepest Lapland. After a celebratory beer while watching Finnish karaoke, of course. But the show! The next day we spotted the Fisker, the Boxster, and the Saab 900 driving back from taping the show's localized intro.

Jaguar F-Pace SVR to debut this week at New York Auto Show

It should come as no surprise that the folks back in England have been working on a hot new version of the Jaguar F-Pace. Today, just ahead of the 2018 New York International Auto Show, the British automaker confirmed that the Jaguar F-Pace SVR will debut this week. The new Jaguar I-Pace and Range Rover SV Coupe will make their North American debuts alongside the F-Pace. All we know about the F-Pace SVR is that it will be the fastest and most powerful version of Jaguar's best-selling product. We don't even have a teaser photo, as Jaguar Land Rover loves to play things close to the vest, so we're sharing some spy photos that we think might be the new model. Expect some version of JLR's 5.0-liter supercharged V8. We're hoping it's the 575 horsepower variant from the refreshed Range Rover Sport SVR. Expect 0-60 mph times in the low-4-second range and a top speed of at least 155 mph. The I-Pace and Range Rover SV Coupe both debuted earlier this month at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. The I-Pace is an all-electric crossover with an estimated 240 miles of range. The SV Coupe is a limited-production two-door variant of the full-size Range Rover. It's meant to be a throwback to the original two-door Range Rover Classic. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Jaguar Land Rover might buy another luxury brand that it doesn't need

It seems that Jaguar Land Rover may be getting bigger in the near future. According to Bloomberg, the company is looking at acquiring some tech companies, and possibly yet another luxury car brand, provided that it fits with the current lineup of cars. On the surface, this makes some sense since Bloomberg reports that a whopping 78 percent of Tata Motors' revenue comes from luxury brands. And of course, any kind of tech acquisition could be useful considering the rapid development of electric and autonomous vehicles. But dig a little deeper, and a possible luxury brand acquisition just doesn't make sense for Jaguar Land Rover. The main reason for this is that the Jaguar and Land Rover brands have the luxury market thoroughly covered. Both brands offer full luxury lines from entry-level to high-end ( Discovery Sport to Range Rover on the Land Rover side, and XE to XJ on the Jaguar side). They also cater to every kind of luxury, from sporty vehicles such as the F-Type and SVR Land Rovers, to cushy luxury machines such as the XJ and Range Rover. So whether the company is competing with BMW or Mercedes, Jaguar and Land Rover have the bases covered. There aren't any other typical luxury brands that would actually add anything to the current lineup. In fact, adding another conventional luxury brand could actually result in the new brand poaching existing Jaguar and Land Rover buyers, rather than picking up new ones. What would make more sense for Jaguar Land Rover would be to pick up either a more mainstream brand, or an ultra-luxury marque. Neither Jaguar nor Land Rover has something that competes directly with the likes of Ford or Toyota in the mainstream game, or Rolls-Royce or Bentley at the top of the luxury heap. Picking up a brand in one of these segments would allow JLR and Tata Motors to actually expand offerings and pick up more sales, rather than having an internal competitor. What path would be ideal? Probably going even farther upmarket. Supercar makers and ultra-luxury brands continue to sell well, and there's the potential for significant profit by layering on features and content to existing platforms. Perhaps the best possibility for a high-end complement to Jaguar Land Rover would be Aston Martin. Not only does it have a strong reputation and line-up, it also could handle both supercars and luxury sedans, thanks to its Lagonda sub brand. Of course it would require Aston Martin to be receptive to a purchase.