Jaguar

The electric Jaguar I-Pace debuted to mostly positive reviews and won design awards for its striking look, but the road since then has been anything but smooth. Jaguar recently recalled the vehicle for the fifth time for an issue that could cause battery fires, and the automaker hasn’t yet figured out a fix for the problem.

Jaguar made the shocking decision to cut all of its current vehicle models other than the F-Pace, but it’s not a permanent move. The automaker has enough current stock to last into 2025, at which time it will take a step upmarket to compete with high-end brands like Bentley.

Monday we reported that Jaguar's lineup is about to undergo some major changes -- changes that will leave the F-Pace as the brand's only model for the "foreseeable future."

Big changes are coming to Jaguar. The new Jaguar Land Rover CEO, Adrian Mardell, recently outlined a plan to shift the brand from a premium automaker to one that sells two-million dollar vehicles in a new “halo strategy” that will see most of its current vehicles discontinued.

Mardell’s plan includes building special edition models with price tags upward of $2 million, far outpacing anything the automaker currently makes outside of its Continuation models. At least some of Jag’s new models will land as EVs, such as the four-seater concept that will debut later this year.

Rumors of Jaguar’s death may be greatly exaggerated, or are they? Recent posts on social media claim to feature a letter from a Jaguar dealer that tells an owner of the brand’s demise. While we don’t tend to fall for shaky internet rumors, there’s enough smoke around Jaguar to warrant a closer look for fire.

Just short of the eight-month mark, Amazon’s expensive The Grand Tour is back for its penultimate episode. Following last summer’s “ Eurocrash,” the maturely titled “Sand Job” sends the trio of presenters to an all-new location to tread upon content ground they’ve crossed many times previously. And though the special is sparse on content, it’s certainly coming with length.

Fans of wagons and British cars, unite -- we have, via Canada, a 2006 Jaguar X-Type Estate for sale today.It has low miles, a V6 engine, and all-wheel drive.

The rumors of Jaguar’s demise may be overblown, but the automaker is slimming its lineup ahead of going electric in 2025. One unfortunate victim of that transition will be the F-Type, Jag’s lone sports car, but before it goes, the company is releasing one more special edition.

Scanning the used-car forums today, I saw several of the usual Volkswagen offerings -- and then I found this 1996 Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas.

The slinky Jaguar F-Type, a car that looks even better in person than it does in photos – at least to these jaundiced eyes – will have just one more trip around the sun. The company announced today that to celebrate the F-Type’s final model year 75 years of Jaguar sports cars, they’ll be making a limited run of ‘F-Type 75’ special editions – available in both regular and R flavors.

Auto-show parties sometimes get out of hand. Most of the shenanigans don’t reach you, the car-buying public, for one reason or another. One major reason is lack of newsworthiness: It’s one thing if a lubricated PR rep confirms some new product that’s supposed to be secret. It’s another if a PR rep sings karaoke poorly.

One thing would make it to the pages of TTAC and maybe a rival site like Jalopnik. The other would not. No matter how bad some PR chief is at warbling “Sweet Caroline.”

Then again, if TMZ is in the house, all bets are off.

Jaguar Land Rover unveiled its all-electric SUV to the Indian market this week, proving that it’s dead serious about expanding the I-Pace’s customer base. While parent company Tata Motors undoubtedly has a fondness for its home region, we cannot help but wonder if its a market worthy of pursuit considering the model’s starting price.

The manufacturer has the (90-kWh) I-Pace stickered at 105.91 lakh rupees, which translates to about $147,000 USD. Considering the unique way India writes out denominations and often transitions between crore and lakh as a way to avoid listing high-value items in the millions of rupees, we were initially convinced we’d messed up the conversion. The sum would not only eclipse the $70,000 MSRP Jaguar has affixed to the I-Pace in the United States, it makes it highly uncompetitive against the luxury EVs already on a market that’s not known for its wealthy consumer base. How could this be JLR and Tata’s preferred strategy?

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced that it plans to have transitioned the Jaguar side of the business entirely to electric vehicles by 2025. Meanwhile, the more profitable Land Rover brand will be receiving its very first EV sometime in 2024. The plan is backed by a £2.5 billion (roughly $3.5 billion USD) investment.

As usual, take these promises with a grain of salt. Practically every manufacturer has underdelivered when it comes to electrification and features existing under the catch-all mobility tag. Jaguar’s current battery-electric vehicle, the I-Pace, hasn’t exactly been a smash hit and its construction is actually contracted out to Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria. Jag also recently abandoned the new XJ model, which has been in development for years. Ironically, the car was supposed to become the brand’s first all-electric sedan.

Jaguar has commissioned a Sixties-inspired F-Type Heritage 60 Edition to celebrate the E-Type’s 60th anniversary. While diamonds are customary on this occasion, the automaker has instead dipped into the E-Type’s palette for its Sherwood Green tone, a color not offered since the 1960s.

Zero to sixty in 3.8 seconds, or 0.3 seconds faster than the outgoing version, the 2021 Jaguar F-PACE SVR is also said to be 2 mph faster, with a top speed of 178 mph. The real question is where outside of Iredell County, North Carolina, scene of NASCAR racer Kyle Busch’s infamous 2011 speeding ticket (128 mph in a 45 mph zone), could you get anywhere near those limits?

In the last edition of Buy/Drive/Burn, we discussed three large European wagons with a $65,000 price point. The Buy vote was a toss-up between the E-Class and the A6 allroad.

Today we cover the sedan variants of the same three cars, at the exact same price point. Think you’ll choose differently?

The Jaguar E-Pace (which is not the electric one, that’s the I-Pace) gets a refresh for 2021.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s another mild refresh story!

Checking through the Buy/Drive/Burn archives, we’ve considered three sets of wagons previously: American wagons of the Seventies, Japanese wagons of the Nineties, and European wagons of 2004.

But Americans have more European luxury wagon choices in this, the Awesome Year of 2020 than in the decade and a half prior. So let’s revisit the discussion.

Jaguar has unveiled its short-term product plans, and fans of compact luxury sport sedans, as well as wagon enthusiasts, have reason to weep.

The model-year updates are starting to come in fast and furious.

That includes the Jaguar F-Pace.

For 2021, the changes include an updated interior, an exterior refresh, new engine choices, updated tech, and a couple of convenience goodies.

Following a failed bid to secure a helping hand from the UK government, rumors arose that Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata Group was considering selling its controlling stake in the British automaker.

The so-called rescue package didn’t see the light of day because the government felt Tata wasn’t exactly in dire financial straits. If it wanted to rustle up some dough, it would have to look elsewhere. On Monday, Tata made it clear: Jaguar Land Rover will not become an orphan again.

An Indian-owned British automaker is about to land a French boss.

On Tuesday, Jaguar Land Rover parent Tata Motors announced the hiring of Thierry Bolloré, former CEO of Groupe Renault, as the automaker’s new CEO, replacing the retiring Sir Ralf Speth. The new boss arrives on September 10th.

Ever since Jaguar launched the XE a few years ago, I’ve held high hopes for it. As much as I, like most auto journalists, dig the BMW 3 Series, I’ve always pined for more compact luxury sport sedan competition.

Mercedes has the C-Class, sure, and Lexus’ IS has often been a solid challenger, especially in certain trims. But the more the merrier, I say, and this particular Jag had a chance at contention.

Jaguar’s I-Pace electric hatchback provides an interesting driving experience. When it has enough charge to be driven, that is.

The I-Pace I drove for a weekend last summer spent much of that time at the dealership, charging, because it failed to charge anywhere else near my home.

More on that in a minute.

Jaguar built the Series III Jaguar XJ for the 1979 through 1992 model years, and so I’ve been seeing these cars in the big self-service vehicle graveyards since, well, the middle 1980s. They still show up in such yards to this day, as long-neglected project cars get swept up in yard- and driveway-clearance projects, but I’ll only document those that are particularly interesting.

A very clean British Racing Green XJ6 from the last model year for the Series III’s straight-six engine certainly qualifies, so here we go!

Eager to reduce R&D costs, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW forged a cross-channel bond earlier this summer, but the increasingly cozy relationship between the Anglo-German rivals likely won’t end with the mere sharing of electric drive units and internal combustion engines.

A number of JLR vehicles poised to drop from the product pipeline could come to fruition thanks to a piece of Bimmer architecture.

The Rare Rides series has touched on Jaguars multiple times previously. But perhaps those beautiful and powerful sporting vehicles lacked something the true car enthusiast always requires: cargo capacity.

Presenting the very rare Jaguar X-Type Sportwagon.

Automakers are keen to pursue partnerships with one another when it means saving money via economies of scale, or when it supports an established corporate structure. Whether it’s in the form of some basic components-sharing or a more intensive joint venture, today we want to hear about the worst possible examples of automotive cooperation.

With automakers perpetually promoting daft new technologies as a way to appease investors, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a new idea that made us take pause and wonder why nobody else had come up with it first. Fortunately, Jaguar Land Rover has done us a solid, with research help from Glasgow University, and delivered a “sensory steering wheel” aimed at giving drivers silent feedback through temperature variances.

The applications of the device are yet to be settled upon but JLR has suggested that the wheel could be used to notify the driver of less-pressing issues that don’t warrant an audible announcement or even offer silent turn-by-turn navigation.

Long before the Ford-based retro throwback began showing up on dealer lots, Jaguar produced a contemporary and modern sedan called the S-type. Let’s check out a brown example, this one hailing from 1966.

Automotive journalists are often accused of falling in love with wagons just because of their bodystyle. Sometimes, however, a wagon is likable for reasons that have nothing to do with shape.

Take the 2018 Jaguar XF Sportbrake. Sure, it’s a sexy looking wagon, but Jaguar hasn’t forgotten that there’s more to life that just being really, really good looking.

Today’s Rare Ride is a fairly elaborate concept. A project that came a long way but was not to be, in a case of much ventured and little gained.

It’s the Jaguar C-X75, from 2015.

For now, Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover isn’t saying whether any of its British plants will close as a result of the automaker’s cost- and job-cutting spree, nor whether we’ll see a shedding of models from its portfolio. Many would argue there’s some Jags in need of cutting.

With global sales falling 4.6 percent in 2018, the automaker claims the next phase of its “Charge and Accelerate” transformation plan will leave 4,500 UK workers out of a job.

Last time on Buy/Drive/Burn, we perused three rear-drive, metal folding roof convertibles from 2010. But some of you seemed less than pleased with the convertible trio. Sad!

Keeping this in mind, today’s Buy/Drive/Burn ups the ante with three more convertibles, each costing over $90,000. Today’s convertibles sport luxury makes, rear-drive, and large engines to match their price tags.

It apparently needed to be said. As forces conspire against it, Indian auto conglomerate Tata Motors decided to pour cold water on rumors that it’s mulling a sell-off of Jaguar Land Rover, or perhaps some part of it.

Sure, there’s many troubles facing its British subsidiary, not least of which is the hazy future promised under Brexit. Then there’s cooling sales in the West and trouble in China — oh, and regulatory pressure in Europe and the continued decline of the traditional sedan. JLR lost a lot of money this year. Rumors abound of a big job cull in the New Year, too. Still, Tata says it has a plan, and that the plan will work.

Our recent Rare Rides entry on the Bugatti EB110 quickly sussed out a couple of mid-90s competitors in the comments section. Today, we’ll visit the trio and pick one to take home.

An entrant each from France, England, and Italy; all of them failures in their own right. Which big money flop will it be?

It’s not oil dripping onto a snooty cobblestone driveway this time around — it’s cash. Following the release of its latest quarterly fiscal report, Jaguar Land Rover announced a plan to plug the leaks threatening its existence.

The automaker cites declining sales as the reason for a 10.9 percent drop in revenue for the three month period ending September 30th, with buyers in China, the U.S. and Europe taking much of the blame. Globally, sales fell 13.2 percent in the last fiscal quarter, with the total volume of vehicles sold by both brands falling below the number of Chevy Silverados sold in the U.S. last quarter. Jag needs to fatten up those seals.

Jaguar Land Rover has a problem, and it’s not Land Rover. The Indian-owned (but still quintessentially British) automaker has seen sales of is fairly vast Land Rover family flourish, at the expense of its Jag models. Sedan sales are grim, and the two SUVs launched to prop up the brand haven’t kept its head above water, volume-wise.

Reportedly, JLR has proposed a radical solution: turn the brand into an all-electric family, thus boosting the corporate MPG of the automaker as a whole while keeping Jaguar viable in a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. Putting aside heritage and associated romance, it’s hard to come up with an argument against it.

Perusing the responses to Matthew Guy’s QOTD post about the ideal $40,000 vehicle, three sedans kept surfacing in the comments. All three were compact, all of them had engines of identical displacement, and all of them were restrained by a price ceiling — meaning no optional extras.

Today we’ll narrow the $40,000 field to these three, and see which one you’d buy with your own bank’s money.

They’re big, expensive, luxurious, and have 12 cylinders sitting under their long hoods. All of them will deplete your checkbook in multiple ways, but you can only take one home with you.

What’s it gonna be?

Few things look more out of place inside a classic automobile than a period-incorrect head unit. It draws the eye like a pimple on a nose.

Fortunately, Jaguar Land Rover is now offering a new range of infotainment systems that pair modern functionality with “discreet and harmonious styling.” It’s the coolest idea since Porsche’s Classic Radio Navigation System in 2015. Alright, so it’s the exact same idea — but that hasn’t made us any less stoked about it.

Like the Porsche unit, JLR’s handiwork also resulted in something you could inconspicuously slot into your dashboard without it sticking out like a sore thumb. The “Classic Infotainment Systems” come in five distinct flavors, designed to pair well with the interior of any Jaguar or Land Rover sold over the last few decades.

For a builder of sexy vehicles with an enviable heritage, Jaguar always seems to be in a state of semi-crisis. From past reliability issues to a combination of aging and lackluster products under Ford’s oversight, the storied British brand was then cast off like a pair of trousers at Lover’s Lane, only to see its fortunes rise after its purchase by India’s Tata Motors. Cash poured in and product development ramped up.

When the sport/luxury F-Pace SUV arrived in 2016, Jaguar’s volume saw a corresponding boost, helping squash another threat: the rapidly growing hatred of sedans by a voraciously pro-utility American public. But you know what they say about things that go up…

The sexiest car ever built rides again, only this time it won’t emit pollutants from its slender, chrome tailpipes. Jaguar Land Rover Classic, the automaker’s parts and servicing arm for old British tin, has announced a production version of its 2017 E-Type Zero concept will be made available to buyers.

Yes, this is the vehicle that Prince Harry and his bride, Meghan Markle, drove away from Windsor Castle in following their May nuptials.

Boasting a body long considered the equivalent of automotive porn, the E-Type Zero uses a restored E-Type Series I as a starting point. Beneath the car’s shapely flanks, however, it’s strictly 21st Century living.

Jaguar Land Rover’s mysterious Road Rover name, now trademarked, has been the subject of speculation ever since the British automaker began tossing it around in internal communications. As the company prepares a slew of new or redesigned models based largely around a versatile new architecture, the name has cropped up again.

It seems “Road Rover” won’t appear on the flanks of the mystery vehicle, even if it is built.

Volvo wanted to bring the sometimes terrifying concept of an electric car out of the shadows and into the mainstream, so it promised fully electric versions of new models launched after 2019. These vehicles will supplement the brand’s hybrid and mild-hybrid offerings.

No longer will the electric car be a standalone model (or model line) with unfamiliar, oddball styling. Mercedes-Benz and BMW agree with this approach, to some degree. Others, like Volkswagen, do not.

Now, Jaguar Land Rover’s joined the fray. The British automaker just announced plans to boost investment by 26 percent over the next three years — an extra $18 billion — to create EV versions of its existing vehicles. That doesn’t mean you’ll get the clean, green vehicle of your dreams, though.

Editor’s Note: This article is written by contributor Jeff Taylor. Due to technical difficulties, it is under the TTAC Staff byline. Once those difficulties are fixed, Jeff’s name will be properly attached.

Jaguar’s new I-Pace EV is the first vehicle in the automaker’s plan to fully electrify — or electrically assist — all of its vehicles beginning in 2020.

The I-Pace raises the question: can Jaguar’s EV powertrain live up to everyday driving demands and deliver the premium experience luxury buyers demand without a huge power-suck mileage penalty?

Additionally, mainstream and luxury manufacturers have announced aggressive electrification plans of their own, which puts more heat on Jaguar to get it right or risk its plug being pulled.

To gauge Jaguar’s level of success, I spent some time in Lisbon, Portugal for the I-Pace Media Drive. During the launch program, I put the I-Pace through some tough driving situations and made some surprising discoveries about both the vehicle and what it means for the industry moving forward.

Jaguar’s I-Pace seems to be Tesla’s greatest threat, if pre-orders in Europe (and glowing reviews) are anything to go on. The electric SUV, which arrives in the U.S. later this year, features twin motors and a combined output of 394 horsepower and 512 lb-ft of torque funnelled to all four wheels.

This is the only way to build a sporty electric car, Jaguar claims. Speaking at the model’s recent global launch, Jaguar Land Rover’s head of vehicle development, Wolfgang Zeibart, said the company threw out any ideas for a two-wheel drive version.

“If you really want a lame duck then you can do it,” he said. This mantra applies to future Jaguar electrics, which will almost certainly appear with the I-Pace’s platform underneath.

Teen car culture is dying a swift death, The Atlantic claims, but Jaguar Land Rover’s head of product strategy feels the youngsters of today will eventually outgrow their desire for hassle-free autonomous commute pods.

As a great Jaguar print ad in the 1990s once stated, “Live Vicariously Through Yourself.”

In Hanno Kirner’s mind, this mantra will guide more than a few Millennials to take over the driving duties and indulge their innermost desires. It had better.

Jaguar is apparently considering bringing the XK out of retirement. Discontinued for the 2015 model year, the automaker didn’t see much reason to keep it around with the F-Type being such a success.

Hanno Kirner, Jaguar Land Rover’s director of corporate strategy, now claims the time has come to commence work on a 2+2 F-Type. However, the brand wants to further re-establish itself as a sports car manufacturer. The F-Type was a good start, and the spiritual successor to the XK will further that goal. But Kirner, along with design head Ian Callum, wants to see a whole family of new sporting vehicles populating Jaguar’s stable within the next decade.

Last time on Buy/Drive/Burn, we checked out three C-body offerings from General Motors and forced you to choose one. The luxury flowed freely, and only limited salt was dashed upon its splendor.

Today we follow the same form with Ford, looking at offerings from three different brands riding on the same platform. Crack open a DEW and let’s get to it.

In today’s automotive naming culture, “300 Sport” cannot possible mean there’s a 3.0-liter engine under the hood. Too obvious. No, much like the Mercedes-Benz C300, the 2019 Jaguar XE 300 Sport will not budge above two liters of displacement.

It will, however, budge well above the priciest 2.0-liter XE’s MSRP. Luckily, you’ll probably never need to know about this, as the XE’s lacklustre U.S. sales suggest this introduced-in-Europe trim will remain on the east side of the Atlantic.

Jaguar Land Rover says it’s totally stoked at the idea of establishing a production facility in the United States, but claims Americans will probably need to buy a few more cars before that vision can become a reality. This might not be a problem, as U.S. buyers have been all about JLR lately. Group sales were the best in over fifteen years in 2016 and last year saw the company achieve a record high of 114,333 deliveries.

While the majority of those sales come from Land Rover, Jaguar has also seen impressive growth over the last three years. More North American sales are definitely coming, especially with Rover already looking to have one of its best years on record in just the first three months of 2018. So why won’t the manufacture pull the trigger and start laying the groundwork on a new factory?

Let’s hope future robo-taxi passengers appreciate a sport-tuned suspension and crisp driving dynamics, because there’s a slim chance they’ll notice it when shuttling around in a driverless Jaguar.

On Tuesday, Waymo, autonomous car unit of Google, announced its intent to purchase up to 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace electric crossovers for its future fleet of AV EVs. Fitted with an array of self-driving hardware and software, Waymo says the cars will hit the road in 2020. Testing begins this year, which has us wondering what kind of wait a regular I-Pace customer faces.

We’re having a Jaguar kick in the Rare Rides series, and by that I mean two cars in a row from the leaping cat.

Though most everyone’s heard of the XJ220, fewer are likely aware of its predecessor: the XJR-15. It’s not slow, it isn’t cheap, and it’s not luxurious.

You want it!

After two years of playing hard to get, Jaguar has finally revealed the production version of the I-Pace SUV. Actually, “revealed” may not be the best word to use, as it feels like we’ve already seen it.

The model looks so much like the earlier concept vehicle that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart, even if they sat inside them. The only real difference is that the production Jag has a cushier-looking interior and a tad more ground clearance. Other than that, both vehicles are practically indistinguishable — even down to the flush door handles.

Despite the bewildering decision to name its non-electric compact luxury crossover the E-Pace and its larger, battery-driven brother the I-Pace, the automaker doesn’t appear to have done a bad job with either. While the E-Pace caters to those seeking a small-and-fancy “sport utility vehicle,” the I-Pace is for those seeing an alternative to Tesla’s Model X.

A little while back, we featured a red modified Jaguar XJS that spent some time at a joint Jaguar-TWR shop named JaguarSport and emerged as the XJR-S.

Today we have a look at another possible direction one can go when modifying an XJS. Presenting the Lister-Jaguar Le Mans.

If you haven’t noticed, Series I Jaguar E-Types have gotten very pricey. There were only about 75,000 Es made and not all have survived for a half century. The E-Type had one of the early monocoque unibodies and it was almost as if it was designed to trap water and rust. Also, quite a few were roadsters and open cars don’t do well when exposed to the elements. That’s made all E-Types rare enough to become valuable (well, that and things like a supple suspension, the outstanding Jaguar XK DOHC inline-six, and a body that even Enzo said was sexier than his Ferraris).

They’re so valuable that at this point it may well be that there is no such thing as an unrestorable example. A number of restoration shops around the world specialize in bringing back E-Types. Every body component is available, and it’s no exaggeration to say that as long as there is a number plate, they can probably rebuild an E around it. There’s even a chance, what with the E’s insane appreciation, that you might not even be underwater after the restoration is done.

I thought about that when I saw this heavily patinated ’64 E-Type coupe for sale on eBay for $47,000.

Jaguar claims the F-Pace, its first crossover SUV, more or less doubled the automaker’s sales almost overnight. That little factoid makes a statement about the state of the automotive industry – namely, that crossovers are hot and that just about every brand needs to sell one to survive, regardless of a brand’s history.

Just ask Porsche. If not for the Cayenne (and now the Macan), could that company continue to afford to build the venerable 911, as well as the Boxster and Cayman?

The answer, of course, is probably not. That’s a big part of the reason why even “exotic” brands such as Bentley and Lamborghini have gotten into, or are getting into, the SUV game.

Certainly, Jaguar has picked up on the trend. Following the F-Pace comes the smaller E-Pace, and soon to follow is the I-Pace, complete with an all-electric powertrain. It may still seem weird to many of us that Jaguar is building and selling crossovers, but we’re also living in an era in which former Jaguar owner Ford offers a turbocharged four in the Mustang (as something other than a weak “base” powerplant) and Mitsubishi is planning on using the Eclipse name on a crossover. Things change, man.