2010 Select Certified Pre-owned Jaguar Xk Coupe on 2040-cars

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Jaguar's EV plans now include a large, lavish sedan that won't be called XJ

Autocar reports Jaguar has resuscitated plans for an electric XJ after canceling the previous attempt, albeit under a different name. There are supposedly two Jaguar-branded EVs arriving in 2025. We know one will be a four-door GT the automaker teased in April of this year. The scant intel we received on it claimed more power than any previous retail Jaguar, besting the 590-horsepower XE SV Project 8, and a starting price around GBP100,000 (around $125,000). We'll guess the output claim represents a top-shelf trim, the starting price represents an entry-trim. The most expensive hardtop the company sells in the U.K. now is the F-Type R 75, asking GBP103,075. A Porsche Taycan, the obvious comparison to a sporty, four-door, six-figure, battery-electric GT, starts at GBP79,200 and runs to GBP148,300 for the Taycan Turbo S. Autocar said company sources outed the Jag as a lavish electric sedan that is effectively, in the magazine's words, a "de-facto XJ replacement but larger and much more luxurious." The Coventry automaker's been dealing with even more turmoil than usual in the past several years, so it's difficult to pin down how many times plans have changed and when. It's thought the original plan had the GT launching ahead of two SUVs. The larger of the two SUVs would be flagship of a three-model electric lineup, specced and priced to challenge the Bentley Bentayga, the English maker joining a cadre of mass-market luxury brands going superluxe and repeatedly naming Bentley as the target. In July of last year, Autocar reported the new plan was "a trio of... electric crossovers," a near-production concept not due until the end of 2024. Now, Autocar's sources maintain the model count remains at three, all of which will sit on the dedicated, long-wheelbase Jaguar Electric Architecture (JEA). If this plan holds, there will be that four-door GT against the Taycan, the SUV against the Bentley, and the swanky sedan as something like a BMW i7 competitor. It is expected to be about the length of the 219-inch Bentley Mulsanne, offer all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering, a range spread of about 385 to 475 miles on the European cycle, and the ability to recharge its battery from 10% to 80% in 13 minutes. The report also said the output floor would be at around 450 hp.

Jaguar turns down offers to join V8 Supercars, questions AMG, Volvo participation

Rumors have swirled in recent weeks that Jaguar may be the next manufacturer to join the V8 Supercars racing series, made popular in Australia but now well-known in other parts of the world as well. Sadly, Jag's participation is not to be. In fact, it would be "insane," according to Jaguar Land Rover Asia Pacific Managing Director David Blackhall, for it to accept either of the two offers it has received to bring Jaguar into V8 Supercars.
Not only is Jaguar not interested in entering V8 Supercars, says Blackhall, it also fails to understand the recent entries from AMG and Volvo. "I don't know what it does for AMG to get flogged by a V8 Commodore week after week, but it's their brand, their issue. And the same thing will happen to Volvo to be honest."
Judging by Blackhall's statements to motoring.com.au, after not-so-serious consideration, the automaker decided the monetary commitment it would take to compete for wins would be more than any potential exposure would be worth, despite the fact that Jaguar has a 5.0-liter V8 to go along with what would seem to be a tailor-made rear-wheel-drive chassis. For what it's worth, one offer would have had Jaguar putting its name across an engine made by someone else, an option that was flatly turned down.

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.