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Jaguar Land Rover reportedly developing Road Rover car

Reports are circulating in the automotive media that Jaguar Land Rover is developing a vehicle that's not an SUV. Called the Road Rover, it would be an all-electric luxury car with "some" all-terrain capability, hinting at all wheel drive. Initially, the EV would launch in late 2019, then spawn more models to complete the lineup. There is also talk about JLR's interest in an outright purchase of an existing luxury car brand to join its portfolio, and that parent company Tata has already given this strategic move the green light. Tata has also reportedly made moves to protect its JLR ownership via acquiring more of its own stock. All this excitement brings to mind the fact that there once existed an actual Road Rover — the Rover brand. Having evolved into MG Rover before going into administration in 2005 and subsequently reborn in China under SAIC Motor ownership, Rover was a moderately posh British carmaker just beneath the level of prestige that Jaguar offered. For some years, both were part of the same corporation. The last Rover saloons were designed and built with BMW input, and at that point Land Rover had already become part of Ford, almost a decade after Jaguar did. Ford's tenure with Land Rover lasted from 2000 to 2008, when Tata bought the British brand — along with the Rover name. Would it just make sense to badge the road car Rover, with no Road or Land affixed to it? Rover's slovenly demise is more than a decade old now, but there's plenty of valuable history still embedded in the long-shelved Viking ship logo. Cast aside memories of Sterling-badged Honda Legend platform siblings and unattractively Federalized SD1 series cars, and take whatever good the 1999-2005 Rover 75 brought to the table — maybe it's time for Rover to be reborn in the current Jaguar Land Rover family. According to Autocar, the first Road Rover would be developed in tandem with the next-generation Jaguar XJ, so they would share an aluminum architecture suitable for both internal combustion engines and battery electric technology, depending of the model. If anything, there is delicious irony to this: The 1980s XJ generation that Jaguar spent decades developing was claimed to be engineered in such a way that the occasional stablemate Rover's Buick-derived 3,5-liter V8 wouldn't have fit in its engine bay — to preserve the Jaguar bloodline. To have the new XJ and a Rover cross paths again would only be fitting. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party.

Jaguar puts Mourinho on ice

There is principal among the persecuted to embrace insults and turn them around. That's how the gay community turned "queer" from a pejorative term into a badge of pride. Now Jaguar has done the same with "footballer's car." While this has been generally seen as the UK equivalent of a "rapper's car," generally a big four-wheel-drive such as a Range Rover, blinged up so as to make it unusable off-road, Jaguar has taken the curious step of deliberately putting a footballer in the new F-Pace. Before you can even buy a Jaguar F-Pace, the company has taken ex-Chelsea and Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho to Northern Sweden to drive a prototype on ice. And there is not an ounce of bling about the event. It was run on 60 km (37 miles) of frozen lake at Jaguar Land Rover's extreme testing facility in Arjeplog, Sweden, which is 40 miles from the Arctic Circle. And it's not just JLR engineers who get to do this. Jaguar sells the "Jaguar Ice Drive Experience," while Porsche has something similar and if you really want to go for it there is a company that does it in Porsches, Maseratis, and the wonderful Alfa 4C. But those are not footballers' cars. Jag quotes Mourinho as saying, "The experience was magnificent. For people in my world, I think a few days in a place like this is magnificent." However even if you read it in a Spanish accent it still sounds like it was written by a PR man. Ditto the quote "I am always learning. Even in football, which is an area that obviously I feel that I'm an expert, I'm never perfect and I always learn." What Jaguar gets out of the association is some quotes about Mourinho's plans – he's going to stay in the UK – which means the major UK papers might pick it up. They probably will and then ignore all the cool ice driving stuff. What we get as car nuts is some awesome footage of the car power-sliding with rooster tails of snow. It's a good looking car; I've seen some testing on the roads around Jaguar's home of Coventry and did a double take. It's a little Macan-like but better looking. I've driven the F-Type with both the 375-HP V6 used in the Mourinho F-Pace piece and the 550-hp supercharged V8, and the V6 is plenty. Until you drive the V8, which blows your mind way. Indeed I have the letter on my desk pleading guilty to the fixed penalty (62 in a 50) that I picked up in the F-Type. What you can't tell from the video is how good the V6 sounds. How it does a nice little wake-the-neighbours blip when you switch it on.

Jaguar launches new classic racing series

One-make racing series have become all the rage for customers who want to actually race their exotic sports cars (or competition-spec versions of them, anyway). Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini and Aston Martin all offer such programs, and Porsche supports several. Now Jaguar is getting in on the action as well, but instead of turning one of its production models - we're looking at you, F-Type - into a spec racer, it's launching an historic racing series instead.
The 2015 Jaguar Heritage Challenge will be open to cars made by the Leaping Cat marque before 1966, including the C-Type, D-Type, E-Type and Mk I and MkII sedans. The series, which builds on the success of the previous Jaguar E-Type Challenge, will be administered by the Historic Sports Car Club (HSCC) based at Silverstone and will include four races in the UK and one in Europe, with the exact schedule still to be determined.
The program was announced at the launch of the Jaguar Heritage Driving Experience, where Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations director John Edwards was also named chairman of the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, replacing former Jaguar managing director Mike O'Driscoll who chaired the organization for the past five years.