Exhibiting alongside parent company Tata Motors, Jaguar Land Rover’s display is bound to have won the brand a whole host of new fans. India is an important emerging market for Jaguar and the manufacturer seems to have pulled out all the stops to impress Auto Expo goers. The display includes the facelifted XF, the XJ and Jaguar’s most powerful production car yet, the wild 542bhp XKR-S. However, it is the pair of Jaguar concept cars that really drew eyeballs.
The first of these is the C-X75 hybrid supercar that will be built in partnership with Williams F1 team. Slated for future production, the low-slung supercar looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie. It’s a range-extender hybrid that uses a pair of mini turbines instead of a conventional combustion engine as a generator for the electric motors. It shouldn’t be dismissed as an anaemic eco car though – it produces 778bhp and can hit a top speed of 330kmh.
Sharing the limelight with the C-X75 is the C-X16 which is a Porsche 911-sized sports car. The concept’s extremely tight skinning, sloping roofline and rear haunches look really smashing in the flesh. Power is courtesy a supercharged, direct-injection, 376bhp 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine. However, a 'push to pass' button on the steering wheel frees up energy stored via an F1-style Kinetic Energy Recovery System, and kicks in an electric motor that boosts power by 94bhp for up to 10 seconds. Performance is a claimed 0-100kph time of 4.4 sec with top speed limited to 300kph.
The adjacent Land Rover stand had its own show-stoppers as well with the spotlight on the DC100 and the DC100 Sport concepts. The concepts, first shown at the 2011 Frankfurt Motorshow, point to what the next generation Defender (due in 2015) will look like. If the design is anything to go by, the new model will share few visual elements with its legendary predecessor. The angular cues remain but the whole treatment is very futuristic. Land Rover is yet to fine tune the styling but has said it wants to design a product that is ‘as relevant in Mumbai as it is in California’.
Elsewhere in the stand, the recently-launched Evoque garnered its fair share of attention too.
Rivan RS 
Viraaj Bhatnagar
Uday Singh
Suraj Viswanathan
