Jaguar

Octane Magazine is reporting that Jaguar Land Rover is to expand its Heritage division in what senior executives are referring to as a ‘complete change of mindset’ within the group, clearly aiming to emulate the success of Aston Martin Works and Ferrari Classiche. The revamped division will be based at Jaguar’s spiritual home, the Browns Lane factory site in Coventry, where production was based until 2005, when it moved to Castle Bromwich. The first of six ‘continuation’ Lightweight E-types is currently in build there, as revealed by Octane in May, but the buildings are now being equipped with service and restoration bays. These will allow owners of classic Jaguars to have their cars serviced, repaired and restored at Browns Lane. All classic Jaguars will be catered for, not just the traditional XKs and E-types, and there will be particular emphasis on […]

The Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance, one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing automotive and motorsports enthusiast event weeks, has selected Jaguar as the Honored Marque for the 2014 Festival. With nearly 80 years since the SS Jaguar name first appeared, the marque has far-reaching appeal and a wide breadth of history to feature at this year’s Festival, to be held October 24 – November 2. Both Motoring Festival venues will honor the contributions Jaguar has made to the automotive industry: Hutchinson Island’s The Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa (Savannah Speed Classic) and Hilton Head Island’s Port Royal Golf Club (Concours d’Elegance, Motoring Midway and Car Club Jamboree). “With a display of Jaguar racecars planned for this year’s Savannah Speed Classic and three classes of Jaguars to be displayed at this year’s Concours d’Elegance as […]

According to The Telegraph, Jaguar Land Rover is to create another 1,700 jobs at its Solihull factory in Birmingham to support a new range of sports and cross-over cars featuring the latest in lightweight aluminium technology. The UK-based car maker, owned by India’s Tata conglomerate, said it would invest £1.5bn to introduce new one-piece “aluminium vehicle architecture” into its range. Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the move as “fantastic news for Solihull and a huge vote of confidence in the UK. This investment will also deliver another 24,000 jobs in the supply chain – on top of the 1.3m the private sector has already created since 2010.” A Jaguar sports sedan, launched in 2015, will be the first to feature the new technology, as well as the first to use engines from the company’s new £500m engine plant in Wolverhampton. […]

Jaguar revealed the F-TYPE, an all-new convertible sports car at an event in Paris late last month. The new Jaguar F-TYPE represents a return to the company’s heartland: a two-seat, convertible sports car focused on delivering performance, agility and maximum driver engagement. The F-TYPE is a continuation of a sporting bloodline that stretches back more than 75 years and encompasses a heritage of beautiful, thrilling and desirable cars. The car was revealed in front of the dramatic setting of the 18th century Musee Rodin. Following the reveal, singer Lana Del Rey took to the stage and performed a new track ‘Burning Desire,’ that she has written as part of her collaboration with Jaguar for the launch of the F-TYPE. The track is confirmed to be the soundtrack to a short film that is being produced in association with Ridley Scott […]

Jaguar has launched an all-wheel-drive version of its XF and XJ models in North America in the hope that the extreme weather conditions characteristic of the region’s “snow states” will drive demand. The luxury carmaker, part of the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) group, chose the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, New York, to put the AWD ehicles on display to the public yesterday. “The cars will be perfectly set up for the extremes of weather that can hit this part of the world,” said Andy Goss, the President of Jaguar Land Rover in North America. “When it snows here it snows. We need to have products that are technically capable of coping with extreme weather conditions.” Read further details on The Telegraph

The speed and elegance of one of motoring’s iconic cars of all time — the sleek Jaguar E-Type — reveals itself as the inspiration for the official poster art of the 2011 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. Jaguar is this year’s featured marque and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the E-Type at the annual gathering of historic race and sports cars to be held August 19-21 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca during the Monterey Classic Car Week. Renowned artist Bill Patterson, who is the official artist of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, says the E-Type is true art on wheels. “Having fallen in love with racing and fast cars in the ’60s, the E-Type represented the perfect blend of design, technology, performance and sex appeal. It still looks fantastic today, 50 years after it was first produced. And to have been […]

A delectable line-up of Lister Jaguars – the Cambridge-built sports cars that took the big manufacturers on at their own game and won – will be showcased at this year’s Race Retro, held at Stoneleigh Park, Coventry from 12-14 March. Examples of the earliest models – including founder Brian Lister’s first car, through the classic Lister ‘knobbly’ and Costin-bodied models and onto the 1990s Storm, which saw the name’s revival, will be reunited with the man behind the marque. Their appearance coincides with a book written by highly-regarded Jaguar enthusiast Paul Skilleter, which chronicles the company’s sports cars, their founder Brian Lister and their successes during the late-1950s. Closely associated with driver Archie Scott-Brown, Listers originally used MG and Bristol engines, but the switch to Jaguar engines and the shape of the car, dubbed ‘knobbly’, brought the company unparalleled success […]

Ford Motor Co.’s Bennie Fowler cheered last week when Jaguar finished in a tie for No. 1 on J.D. Power and Associates’ long-term vehicle dependability study. “I happen to know the guy who was the COO at Jaguar in 2003 when we started making improvements,” said Fowler, who was, indeed, COO of Jaguar in 2003. Today, Fowler is Ford’s group vice president of quality. Back then, Fowler and a team of executives put Ford processes in place at Jaguar to improve quality. Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Group in 2008, but J.D. Power’s dependability study evaluates three-year old, or 2006, models. From Freep.com