Back in June, we urged you to overlook the lack of a fire-breathing V8 engine in Jaguar’s prototype C-X75 supercar. That’s because despite the absence of a ferocious V8 engine – long considered Jaguar’s bread and butter – the C-X75 concept was more than capable of producing a combined 850 horsepower from a turbo and supercharged 502-horsepower four-cylinder engine paired with two electric motors.
Sadly, Jaguar has scrapped the C-X75 project altogether. What it has learned from the high-revving four-banger and electric motor combo, though, will likely influence high-performance Jags of the near future.
For fuel-efficiency fans that’s great news, as word has come that Jaguar isn’t married to burly V8s as it once was.
“We are not wedded to V8s. Can Jaguar exist without a V8?” asked Steven de Ploey, Jaguar’s product and marketing director, in a recent interview with Australian cars website Drive. “The answer is yes,” Ploey added.
Jaguar – just like all other global automakers – has been forced to re-think its powertrain designs in order to meet the increasingly stringent fuel-efficiency standards while also retaining or improving power output. Presently, Jaguar has answered this challenge by replacing normally aspirated V8s with supercharged V6 engines.
That marriage might not last long either. “We are not wedded to supercharging as the defining technology to deliver performance. What we are wedded to is intelligent performance; today that is delivered through superchargers but tomorrow that could be anything,” Ploey added.
Worried you won’t be able to get a V8 Jag in the near future. Don’t. Any V8 discontinuance is likely a decade away. As Ploey reassured readers in his Drive interview: “… is it our intention at this stage to eliminate the V8 from our engine palette? Clearly not because we need it for our performance.”
Do you think Jaguar’s of the future will posses the same bite and performance despite downsizing its engines? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.
