Bond villain to drive the Jaguar C-X75 in SPECTRE

 

Saw that too. The article I read said the powertrain will actually be the 5.0L supercharged in the F-Type. They just need the car too look fast/good, the hybrid powertain wasn't needed and wasn't reliable

 

Ever since they made the 5 prototypes of the CX-75, I kept thinking "Why don't they just put the Supercharged V8 in it and put it on sale?" It would get quite a few sales I would imagine, as long as it was decently reliable. It already has the looks, particularly the rear end and the side profile. Just a tweak to the the front in the style of the F-Type by adding the blade in the middle of both of the side air intakes on the front to cover up the 'pouty mouth' and I would not be able to criticize it.

 

The real reason it was never built.

 

20-odd years ago, Jaguar built a concept supercar and it was fantastic; V12, AWD, etc. People loved it and it looked to be a winner all round.

Then when it came time to put it in production; this didn't work, that didn't work, so in the end they ran with a 3.5L V6 with a couple of turbos, and RWD only.

Then they released it during a financial crisis... it didn't sell, people took Jaguar to court to get their deposits back. And so on...

The memories run long & deep...

 

The XJR-15 ? I believe it was based off the XJR-9, the 1998 Le Mans winning car, V12 with over 700 BHP, all carbon fiber etc..

XJR-9:




I still want an XJR-15 and have seen some for resale in the UK previously. Think they go for about 200k GBP...



Then theres the XJ220 which they got very right and I have driven one. Felt slower than my F-type!

 

I was talking about the XJ220...read up on the court cases. The planned production run of 350 was cut to 281 and the last cars sat unsold for months, in some cases years.

 

If they were able to produce the CX-75 and sell it for $200,000 give or take it would be a smash hit. Needs to compete with the Audi R8. They have the pieces to make it work.

 

As an interesting bit of trivia, there used to be a racing series in the U.S. called the International Race of Champions (IROC), where famous drivers from all the racing series (NASCAR, Indycar, F1, ALMS, etc.) would drive identically prepared cars on various tracks around the country.

The featured car was usually a Camaro or some Amercian make, but they
did use the XJ220 for one year, probably because there was a ready supply of unsold cars and Jaguar needed the marketing exposure. Most of them were wrecked one or more times, and that was probably how they disposed of a dozen or so cars.

 

I never really liked the look of the XJ220. I think it's an ugly car. Did Ford have anything to do with the design?

 

During Ford ownership, their influence was more on the mechanical side. I think that is a 100% Jaguar design inspired by the LeMans car of the era.

BTW, the engine in your R Coupe is a Ford design built in a Ford plant.

 

Built in the "Jaguar Room" at the Ford Bridgend plant, & the parts are sourced through the FoMoCo supply chain, but the design was Jaguar's own. There is an ex-Jag engineer here on the forum who worked on the AJ-V8, he's mentioned several times that Ford had very little input into the technical aspects.