Jaguar development drivers are pushing the brand's most powerful road-going car, the XE SV Project 8, to its limit at the Nürburgring, with the objective of setting a new lap record.
The 600hp sedan is a Jaguar Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) creation, which is at the end of its pre-production schedule and on course for customer deliveries from May 2018. Jaguar is understood to be eager to secure the fastest time for four-door models around Germany's Green Hell.
The car, which is the brand's second special edition following the Jaguar F-Type Project 7 in 2014, will have to beat the current quickest four-door, the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, and its 7min 32sec time. The XE's advantage will come with its much clearer track focus, which makes it so far removed from the regular XE, and it will be hand-built at SVO’s Technical Centre in Coventry rather than at the regular plant in Solihull.
Like the Project 7, the special XE model makes use of Jaguar's supercharged 5.0-litre V8 engine. But power has been ramped up to unprecedented levels, peaking at 23.3hp more than the special-edition F-Type. The XE SV is all-wheel drive, rather than being rear-driven like the Project 7, and uses a specially tuned version of its eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox.
The Project 8 is Jaguar's most accelerative current model, with a 0-100kph time of 3.3sec that beats the all-wheel-drive F-Type SVR by two-tenths. This edges the XE SV into the realms of the Porsche 911 GT3 and ahead of fellow limited-run track special, the BMW M4 GTS.
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Viraaj Bhatnagar
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