British car guide WhatCar? has announced its 2008 car of the year awards. The categories range from supermini to performance, and every class in-between. Throughout the results common themes are apparent. No matter what type of vehicle they are looking for, British consumers are in need of everyday practicality along with fuel economy. Practicality comes in the form of tight packages that do not sacrifice storage space or good handling characteristics. Fuel economy comes in the form of small diesel engines powering almost every vehicle on the list. WhatCar? also seems to have a bit of a bias towards makes with British heritage. It named the Jaguar XF 2.7D V6 Luxury their overall 2008 Car of the Year. The Jag was also the winner of the executive car category. They noted that the car’s classic refined Jaguar design mixed with modern details is what won them over.
Corporate Business
Delay In Carbon Emissions Cut
British car manufacturers have won a four-year delay to the introduction of European rules designed to force them to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new cars. Jaguar Land Rover was granted a special deal after Britain joined ranks with other car-producing EU states to water down fuel efficiency targets proposed last year. The highest levels of fines for failing to comply with the targets will not come into force until 2019, not in 2015 as previously proposed. The deal means manufacturers will be able to delay investing in expensive carbon-reduction technology for several more years. MEPs and the 27 EU member states have agreed to abandon plans to force the industry to reduce average CO emissions from around 158g/km last year to 130g/km by 2012. Staff
Aston Martin
British GT Entries Revealed
An entry list of 27 cars has been revealed for the 2008 Avon Tyres British GT Championship featuring 19 cars in GT3 and eight in the new GT4 class. Defending champions RPM will run two cars in the GT3 class and also expand into GT4 with a further three cars. Former BTCC race-winner Paul O’Neill will partner Steve Clark in the #1 entry while Nick Foster will be partnered by experienced youngster Oliver Bryant in the sister car. In GT4, the team will run three Ginetta G50s for the pairings of Steve Tandy/Phil Bailey, Joe Osbourne/Michael Broadhurst and Chris Cooke/James Harrison. Staff
Highlights
VotW – A History of Jaguar Cars
Strange how time gets away from us. I thought we had featured Jaguar Cars recently in our Video of the Week (VotW) series, but on looking back that proved not to be the case. I had to go way back into 2015 to find such a video. How could this be? So let us reconcile that now with a video with is a short history of Jaguar Cars. Of course nothing less that a full television series could possibly do the span of years of Jaguar justice, but this video does present a good overview of the highlights. As most good British car buffs know, Jaguar as we know it was originally founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922. They originally made motorcycle sidecars before developing bodies for passenger cars. Under the ownership of Swallow Sidecar (S.S.) gave way […]