1989 Jaguar Xj Xjs 2d Coupe on 2040-cars

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Jaguar's design boss wants to build another sports car model

The global sports car segment is facing a strong, glacial headwind, but Jaguar believes smoother waters are right around the corner. One of the company's top executives predicted the market will recover in the coming years, and he wants his team to be ahead of the curve when that happens. "Jaguar will always build sports cars. I'd love to do more than one," affirmed Julian Thomson, the man who replaced Ian Callum at the head of the brand's design department, in an interview with British magazine Auto Express. The only sports car currently in the Jaguar portfolio is the F-Type. While enthusiasts still love sports cars, the run-of-the-mill buyers that keep automakers profitable have rejected them in favor of crossovers and SUVs. And, requests for cleaner, more efficient cars make developing fun cars considerably more difficult; even Mazda is looking into taking the Miata into hybrid or electric territory. Jaguar faces the same challenges, but Thomson expects the sports car segment will rise up from its ashes when motorists realize they're trapped in a sea of crossovers. "In this day and age of electrification and autonomous technology, a part of me thinks there may be a resurgence of people enjoying transportation for transportation's sake, and driving for driving's sake," he said. "Whether that makes the market bigger I don’t know, but I think there is a threat to volume production cars, and they are going to struggle to find a position on what they do. IÂ’d hope that truly special and luxury cars, sports cars, will find a place where they have the option to be more exotic." He stopped short of confirming a second sports car is under development, so it's far too early to pinpoint the segment it would compete in. In the meantime, Jaguar just gave the F-Type a facelift (pictured), and its vehicle development team has already started working on the model's successor. The rumor mill has started spinning; we've heard reports of the nameplate pulling a Corvette by going mid-engined, adopting BMW's 4.4-liter V8, and getting a battery-electric powertrain. The latter option would slot neatly into Jaguar's electrification push, but Thomson hinted it's easier said than done. He explained making an electric sports car with a huge amount of power, like the 2,000-horsepower Lotus Evija, is not the answer.

2021 Jaguar XF gets new interior, down to four-cylinder engines and sedan body style

Just like the F-Pace, the 2021 Jaguar XF luxury sedan is getting a light refresh for the new model year. Unlike the F-Pace, the XF's new features are mostly limited to interior and exterior design. And it also loses an engine and body style option. From the outside, not much has changed with the XF. It has a fresh grille, new LED headlights and taillights, and fender vents with the "Leaper" Jaguar logo. It's inside where things have really changed. A completely new dashboard design has been added, which looks a lot like the F-Pace's. It has a full-width air vent motif at the top, and below it are panels with nice stitching and either open-pore or aluminum trim. Whether all this also includes a much-needed improvement in materials quality won't be known until we test one.  The focal point is the new 11.4-inch infotainment system screen made of glass with a magnesium frame. Powering it is the latest Pivi operating system with the capability for over-the-air updates. Jaguar has also added a number of standard features including proximity entry, wireless phone charging, active noise cancellation, a surround-view camera system and a 12-speaker Meridian sound system. While some new features have been added, Jaguar has also removed some options. The XF is now only available with four-cylinder engines, as the supercharged V6 has been discontinued with no direct successor. The base engine is the turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder making 246 horsepower and 269 pound-feet of torque. It's available with either rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. A version of this engine making 296 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque is optional, and it comes only with all-wheel drive. The other deletion is that of the Jaguar XF Sportbrake wagon, news first reported by CNET Roadshow, and then confirmed by Jaguar. This comes just as two new luxury wagons of its size have been introduced to the market: the Audi A6 Allroad and Mercedes-Benz E-Class All-Terrain. However, like the Volvo V90 Cross Country, they're of the mildly lifted and body-cladded wagon sub-segment, which the XF Sportbrake most definitely was not. The surviving un-cladded, un-lifted wagons in this segment are now the regular E-Class and V90, but the latter can only be special ordered in the United States.  The XF will go on sale around January. It should also be priced similarly to the current XF, which starts at $52,250. Update: Jaguar confirmed that the XF Sportbrake has been discontinued for the U.S.

Junkyard Gem: 1994 Jaguar XJ12

While Americans were able to buy new Jaguar two-doors with V12 engines under their bonnets from 1971 all the way through 1996, availability of new Jaguar 12-cylinder sedans was much spottier here. The Series 1 and Series 2 XJ12s were sold here from the 1973 through 1979 model years, and then there was a grim Jaguar V12 four-door drought here all the way until the 1994 model year. Here's one of those very rare felines, found in a Northern California boneyard in April. Jaguar had developed the XJ40 successor to the Series 3 XJ over an agonizingly protracted period that spanned the British Leyland era of the early 1970s through the first production cars being shown to the world in 1986. The XJ40 first appeared in the United States as a 1988 model. The following year, the Ford Motor Company bought Jaguar. The engineers in Coventry struggled to design a viable V12-engined XJ40 for years, giving it the XJ81 designation. At long last, the XJ81 was revealed to the motoring world in 1993… just prior to the replacement of the XJ40 by the XJ300 for the 1995 model year. All of the XJ81s sold in the United States—just over 1,500 of them in all—were 1994 models. This junkyard provided a bonanza of rare European iron when I stopped by on that chilly spring morning. Located within a few rows of this one-year-only XJ81 were a Volkswagen Phaeton and a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. The yard also had a running Peugeot 504 for sale in their "builders" section, and I'll admit I was very tempted by it. The April 1994 production date indicates that this is one of the very last members of the XJ40/XJ81 family to be built (though Jaguar continued to use platforms derived from the XJ40 until the X350a arrived as 2003 models). This 6.0-liter engine was an excruciatingly tight fit in this engine compartment (there are semi-credible tales that the XJ40's engine compartment was made so narrow as a sneaky office-politics means of preventing British Leyland from installing Rover V8s in Jaguars), and working on it must be a mechanic's nightmare. Output was 301 horsepower and 336 pound-feet. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz's V12 was rated at 389 horsepower and 420 pound-feet, while BMW's V12 had 296 horsepower and 332 pound-feet. The MSRP for this car was $73,200 for the dual-airbag version (and we can see that both airbags were deployed in this car's career-ending crash). That amounts to $151,889 in 2023 dollars.