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Jaguar sculpture by RCA design students is a minimal beauty

With its well-deserved reputation for high design, it is not particularly surprising to see Jaguar reaching outside of the automotive realm for future inspiration. To that end, the British automaker recently enlisted the talents of students at the Royal College of Art to create a piece of forward-looking, automotive-inspired sculpture.
The result of this project can be seen above; a sculpture created by RCA students Claire Miller and Ewan Gallimore, and unveiled to a small audience to kick off London's Clerkenwell Design Week. The spare and rather elegant form created by the talented pair absolutely harkens back to coupes from Jaguar's past as well as its present (read: F-Type) without aping any one model particularly.
In a press release, the artists had this to say about the work: "Our form relates to the Jaguar brand through its sculptural volumes, bespoke materials and visual lightness. These elements helped us to create a sculpture that aimed to display a seamless transition between interior and exterior space." Get a better look at the Jaguar artwork in the gallery above, or read through the press release, which follows.

Jaguar practiced the E-Pace barrel roll - wait, how do you practice a barrel roll?

Jaguar launched the E-Pace compact crossover by literally launching it into a barrel roll. But to get to the point where the company could do the stunt in front of the press naturally took plenty of preparation and planning, and the company documented much of it in the video above. It turns out that the early stages of preparing the stunt are about as entertaining as the stunt itself. The video spends a little time showing some of the computer modeling and designing of the stunt, but most of the video covers the practice runs done with a test car. Jaguar set up its prototype offset ramp for initiating the roll, and had a massive airbag set up for the test car to land in. And early on, to make sure the stunt driver wasn't hurt, they rigged up a Land Rover Evoque with autonomous driving equipment to do the first runs. Later the stunt driver took a few turns. The testing resulted in flips and tumbles you've only seen with Hot Wheels cars. It's so strange and fun to see a full-size car launched this way. Once the team finally had the jump pretty well dialed in, the stunt driver was able to test it launching from ramp to ramp, and then eventually do it in the production E-Pace at the crossover's reveal. Related Video: Image Credit: Jaguar Jaguar Crossover Luxury Videos jaguar e-pace

Jaguar planning two bodystyles for next XJ

As we alluded to in today's F-Type first drive, Jaguar hasn't been selling its wares in China for very long, and as a result, buyers there usually don't have the same appreciation for the brand's history. So you might reasonably think that the company's recent radical styling shift (kicked off by the 2008 XF) wouldn't be as jarring to the nation's buying populace since they really didn't have the automaker's more traditionally styled models from years past to compare them against.
Yet while Jaguar and its sister marque, Land Rover, continue to pick up steam in China's developing market, that apparently isn't necessarily the case. Local buyers there tend to have more conservative tastes when it comes to styling, preferring more upright dimensions, big back seats and larger quantities of traditional luxury materials (think: chrome and wood) than other markets currently find desirable. Thus, the very bold current-generation XJ sedan may be leaving some sales on the table.
According to Edmunds, Jag doesn't want to risk that, and as such, it is preparing two bodystyles for the next-generation XJ - one with the rakish coupe-like styling of the current model, and a more "old-school" three-box sedan designed to appeal to a wider swath of Chinese buyers.