Jaguar sets a new four-door lap record at Nürburgring

Jaguar’s most powerful on-road car in production – the XE SV Project 8 – has broken the past record of being the fastest 4-door sedan on Nürburgring. The car took a lap stint of 20.8km in 7:21:23, taking over Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio that did it in 7min 32sec. Alike other ring records claims, time was recorded by the manufacturer who released the video footage, below to prove the claim.

The XE SV is the second special-edition model launched by SVO after the Jaguar F-Type project 7 in 2014. The XE will be built by hand at SVO’s Technical Centre based in Coventry – not in Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) Solihull plant, along with regular XEs.

In a conversation with our sister publication, Autocar UK, a spokesperson from the company said that more than a hundred XE SVs – a third of total due for production – have been sold prior to the car making its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. They hope for the rest to sell out, soon after the news of it being the fastest four-door sedan.

The XE SV Project 8 is powered by Jaguar’s 5.0-litre supercharged V8 engine (which was also used in the Project 7). However in Project 8, power has been ramped up to an impressive 600hp – about 23hp higher than the special edition F-Type. The XE SV is all-wheel drive and not rear wheel drive like the project 7. It is mated to a special tuned version of eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox.

The Project 8 clocks 100kph from still in 3.3 seconds – the best acceleration a  Jaguar car has produced, so far, beating the F-Type SVR by two-tenths. This aligns the XE SV with the Porsche 911 GT3 and overtakes a fellow limited-run track special – the BMW M4 GTS. The car uses racing specifications-based bodywork to produce downforce. It is equipped with an adjustable front splitter, a flat underbody, a rear diffuser, an adjustable rear wing and bumper made of carbonfibre.

From the outside, even though the XE SV appears almost similar to the regular XE, it has undergone extensive alterations. 75 percent of the bodywork is new, with only the front doors and roof unchanged from the production models. The headlights have been noticeably moved forward by 14mm to allow for extra cooling and engine work.

Moreover, The Project 8 gets a bespoke carbon-fibre bonnet which is 3kg lighter than the production model. It also includes an air extraction duct for extra engine cooling. The arches on the side have been widened by 55mm to sufficiently cover the 305mm-wide tyres. The revised panels required SVO engineers to install custom-made rear doors, as well. The exterior of the car has been developed through wind tunnel testing and computational fluid dynamics simulations. Jaguar claims to have achieved 205 percent reduced lift in Track mode, with the car producing more than 122kg of downforce at 299 kph.

Speaking to our sister publication, Autocar UK, SVO Director, Mark Stanton said, “Only the roof and front door skins of astonishing Nürburgring Nordschleife record validates the success of such extensive changes.”