With beauties like the Jaguar F-Type and Aston Martin V12 Vantage S populating showroom floors, there really isn’t a shortage of great British sports cars. Nonetheless, a new company has decided to build another.
For its take on the British sports car, David Brown Automotive plans to marry the chassis and powertrain of a Jaguar XKR with retro bodywork straight out of the 1960s.
That bodywork will be made out of aluminum, and, judging from the teaser photos David Brown released, there appears to be more than a little Aston Martin DB5 in the styling, too.
The new car will probably be much faster than the six-cylinder DB5, though. It will have the XKR’s 5.0-liter supercharged V8, producing the same 510 horsepower it does in the Jag.
Coupled to a six-speed automatic transmission, David Brown says that engine will propel the car – codenamed “Project Judi” – from 0 to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds, and on to a top speed of 155 mph.
The company describes the car’s performance as “brisk yet refined.” It will also use the XKR’s suspension, meaning the ride should be somewhere between luxury-car smooth and sports-car fierce. We’ll see if it turns out to be the next F-Type or the next Triumph TR7.
The work of turning an XKR into a Judi (it will receive a proper name at its unveiling) will be handled by the Envisage Group, which was responsible for the similarly retro LyonHeart K sports car.
David Brown’s creation will be unveiled at the Top Marques show in Monaco April 17.
