2009 Jaguar Xkr Base Coupe 2-door 4.2l on 2040-cars

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Jaguar XJ electric sedan debut pushed to late 2021

Jaguar's been testing prototypes of the coming all-electric XJ sedan for a while now, an example we saw earlier this year testing in the cold having reached an advanced stage. The plan had been to launch the battery-powered flagship fastback this year, with sales to commence early 2021. A report in The Sunday Times says that plan has changed, Jaguar pushing the XJ back to the third quarter of next year while the automaker focuses on its finances and its most profitable models. The site FormaCar reports, "The presentation date on the official website now reads, 'October 2021,'" but we haven't found that XJ-specific page. In response to questions about the Jaguar canceling the XJ, a spokesperson responded, "Our engineers continue to work on the next-generation all-electric Jaguar XJ. We remain committed to our long-term strategy and our product portfolio remains the same, but the unprecedented situation will inevitably have an impact on our immediate plans." The Jaguar Land Rover group, coming off a string of deep losses during 2018 and 2019, was working through a cost-cutting and turnaround plan when Covid-19 hammered the global economy. The whispered concern among outsiders is that Jaguar will drop the XJ entirely, but that doesn't appear to be the case for now. The automaker cut thousand of jobs while investing more than a billion pounds into its Castle Bromwich factory to prepare for electric-car assembly. At the moment, Castle Bromwich normally builds the XE and XF sedans, those offerings also in flux while Jaguar reportedly considers turning one or both of them into a small hatchback or a compact plug-in hybrid sedan. We write "normally" because the factory was put on pause to deal with Covid lockdowns, and isn't scheduled to restart until August 14. And above all of this, JLR is on the hunt for a new CEO to replace Ralf Speth. We've been expecting the new sedan to open the book on mainstream luxury EVs, the same way the I-Pace did for SUVs, but it appears that won't happen. The electric XJ will come on the Modular Longitudinal Architecture, and we've understood the specs include a 90.2-kWh battery pack, the same size as the I-Pace pack. There have been rumors about a four-motor setup, but odds favor a twin-motor arrangement. The motors in the I-Pace produce 394 horsepower and 512 pound-feet of torque. For an XJ flagship, we'd expect an even more powerful option in the range.

Regulators consider adding more carmakers to Takata recall

Volkswagen's diesel emissions scandal has been getting a lot of press recently, but the Takata airbag inflator affair could be grabbing headlines again soon. According to Bloomberg, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is contemplating an expansion to the campaign that could add seven automakers to the 12 already affected. They are Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Spartan Motors, Suzuki, Tesla, Volvo Trucks, and VW Group. To be clear, there's no recall for any of these automakers, yet. The government is simply asking for a full list of vehicles that each of them have with Takata-supplied inflators containing ammonium nitrate propellant. The agency is concerned this substance could play a roll in the ruptures. "NHTSA is considering not only whether to issue an administrative order that would coordinate the remedy programs associated with the current Takata recalls, but also whether such an order should include expansion of the current recalls," the letters say. All seven can be viewed, here. From a report supplied by Takata, the government already knows that the company supplied 887,055 inflators with ammonium-nitrate propellant to VW and 184,926 of them to Tesla. In an incident during the summer, a side airbag allegedly burst in a 2015 VW Tiguan. In early September, NHTSA put out a revised report that there were 23.4 million inflators to be replaced in 19.2 million vehicles in the US. An earlier accounting from the agency had about 34 million of the parts in 30 million cars. High humidity is still believed to be among the biggest risk factors for the ruptures. Although, if ammonium nitrate also gets the blame, some already recalled models might need to be repaired again. Related Video:

Highlights from the Goodwood Festival of Speed, including the McLaren P1 and a Ford Transit running the hill

The sole purpose of this post is as a time-waster, and since you shouldn't have to work to waste time, we've done it for you. In the numerous videos below you'll find cars that have lately been in the news tramping all over the grounds of Lord March's estate in Goodwood, England.
There's the McLaren P1 heading up the hill, the Jaguar Project 7, then a casually-driven Porsche 917 followed by an even-more-casually-driven Porsche 956, topped off by a Porsche 936 that is anything but casually driven. The next round is the flame-spitting Peugeot 405 T16 Pikes Peak from Climb Dance, a camera mounted on the Peugeot RCZ R after it showing you what the whole, uninterrupted run up the hill looks like. For a real head-turner, we couldn't embed it but there's Andy Reid blasting up the hill in a Ford Transit Supervan with a Cosworth 3000 V6 engine.
The modern racing contingent has Allan McNish doing the hill in the Audi R18 e-tron quattro he used to win Le Mans and Lewis Hamilton making lots of tire smoke in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas MGP-W02. For comparison, that's followed by Nick Heidfeld's record-setting run up the hill in 1999 in the McLaren MP4/14 . The classic racing contingent is headlined by 71-year-old Giacomo Agostini on an MV Agusta.