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Jaguar gives World Car jurors private viewing of J-Pace, next XJ

The brace of accolades bestowed on the Jaguar I-Pace include three awards given by the 86 jurors on the World Car of the Year panel. They anointed the I-Pace World Car of the Year, World Green Car of the Year, and World Car Design of the Year. Jaguar hosted a get-together for its new WCOTY friends, inviting jurors to the carmaker's Coventry design studios to check out future products. The coming all-electric XJ and flagship J-Pace were the stars of the gathering, this being the first time Jaguar's publicly got behind the range-topping crossover. Ex-head designer Ian Callum hinted about the J-Pace in April, but all he would say is, "We're looking at it." With Jaguar confident enough to show the vehicle to very important outsiders, the J-Pace could be on track for its rumored 2021 launch. Jaguar dropped hints of other new cars, too. The carmaker "gave a firm nod to" two new crossovers that will be "considerably less expensive" than current crossovers in the lineup, to be called A-Pace and B-Pace. We've never heard of these, but based on the brand's naming structure, the A-Pace would slot in at entry-level, the B-Pace just above. It's said that one or both of these will be sized to compete in the World Urban Car Awards sometime in the 2020s. That means subcompact dimensions along the lines of this year's World Urban Car winner the Suzuki Jimny, or the top-three finisher Kia Soul. The jurors also got a look at the imminent replacements for the F-Type and XE. The second-generation F-Type is said to wear an evolutionary design; the big changes will take place under the hood. A V8 could remain in the top tier, but one sourced from BMW instead of Jaguar's own supercharged 5.0-liter V8. The current V6 is expected to give way for an Ingenium inline-six developed in-house. And expect one or both of them to come with hybrid assistance, as Jaguar's made a point of saying that all of its offerings will get "electrified options" in the 2020s. What did Jaguar get out of the open-house? Insider information, apparently: "150 senior Jaguar employees" put questions to the WCOTY jurors about how the panel road-tests cars. Perhaps the WCOTY award will become the new Nurburgring for the next decade. As a final flourish to everyone who'd get the news, Jaguar CEO Ralph Speth informed the audience that his charge and Land Rover "are definitely not for sale to Peugeot-Citroen, Fiat-Chrysler, Hyundai-Kia or any other motor manufacturing companies." So there.

Jaguar envisions future without V8 engines

With tighter emissions and fuel economy regulations looming, Jaguar may have to do more than make a small, fuel-efficient hatchback to lower its model range's consumption figures - it also might give up its venerable V8 power, Drive reports. But not anytime soon, says Steven de Ploey, Jaguar's product and marketing director, who recognizes that the V8 can be replaced only by something that offers the same, or better, performance. But he has a word of caution: "We are not wedded to V8s."
In the meantime, de Ploey says there are other ways to reduce emissions. One of the first steps Jaguar could take is to shift away from the use of superchargers, which aren't as good as turbochargers at maintaining efficiency and making power. But he adds that supercharging still is "at the heart of Jaguar's performance proposition," and that the company has addressed the current downsizing trend by "replacing our naturally aspirated V8 with a 3.0-liter supercharged V6."
Consider one of de Ploey's comments on the cancelled C-X75 supercar (pictured) for some clue about Jaguar's future: "Some of the stuff we have already exploited to the extreme in the C-X75 is the kind of thinking for us and is an essential test bed to see how we could evolve from today to something that is sustainable in the future."

Jaguar practiced the E-Pace barrel roll - wait, how do you practice a barrel roll?

Jaguar launched the E-Pace compact crossover by literally launching it into a barrel roll. But to get to the point where the company could do the stunt in front of the press naturally took plenty of preparation and planning, and the company documented much of it in the video above. It turns out that the early stages of preparing the stunt are about as entertaining as the stunt itself. The video spends a little time showing some of the computer modeling and designing of the stunt, but most of the video covers the practice runs done with a test car. Jaguar set up its prototype offset ramp for initiating the roll, and had a massive airbag set up for the test car to land in. And early on, to make sure the stunt driver wasn't hurt, they rigged up a Land Rover Evoque with autonomous driving equipment to do the first runs. Later the stunt driver took a few turns. The testing resulted in flips and tumbles you've only seen with Hot Wheels cars. It's so strange and fun to see a full-size car launched this way. Once the team finally had the jump pretty well dialed in, the stunt driver was able to test it launching from ramp to ramp, and then eventually do it in the production E-Pace at the crossover's reveal. Related Video: Image Credit: Jaguar Jaguar Crossover Luxury Videos jaguar e-pace