2000 Jaguar Xk8 Base Coupe 2-door 4.0l on 2040-cars

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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Jaguar laying groundwork for a reborn XK

There have been rumors about plans to replace the Jaguar XK since before the gentleman's coupe ended production in 2014. Depending on which rumor you read, a reborn XK could remain compact and offer a 3.0-liter turbodiesel, grow a bit and move upmarket to challenge the Mercedes S-Class Coupe, or grow even more and challenge the Bentley Continental GT as "an elegant four-seater coupe." About the only three consistent details have been that the new XK would ride on a reworked F-Type platform, that the XK would become Jaguar's new flagship, and brand design director Ian Callum providing all the quotes about a potential resurrection. Now Hanno Kirner, the head of product strategy at Jaguar Land Rover, has added quotes that could portend the return of the big two-door cat. Kirner told Autocar that Jaguar "will continue to invest in sports cars," and that "I use the plural quite deliberately." That is, the F-Type won't be left to carry the sports car mantle by itself. Questions remain about the definition of the term "sports car," and whether that really means a return of the XK. Kirner suggested it's possible that a future offering could be "a body variant" of the F-Type. Callum's been fighting for the XK's return ever since Jaguar made the decision to kill it. The designer said the two-seat F-Type wasn't intended to kill the bigger 2+2, and at one point his team had already finished design work on the third-generation XK. However, the F-Type sold so well that the company marketers decided the automaker didn't need both cars. A number of things needs to happen before any XK gets the green light, though. The next-gen F-Type is in the works and could come as soon as next year, and Jaguar will want to make sure the two-seater continues its run of steady sales. The XK spirit lives on in the current F-Type, since the F-Type sits on a reworked version of the XK's aluminum architecture, and the second-generation F-Type will evolve that aluminum platform again. It's said that the platform could morph back into a 2+2 without undue hassle, but any new XK wouldn't likely arrive before 2021 even if approved. Callum remains on the case, saying in October 2017, "I want a two-seater [the F-Type] and a 2+2. We're working on something now." Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

2014 Jaguar XFR-S Sportbrake is one hot hauler

Oh look, another super-hot wagon that won't be making its way to the US. Awesome.
Actually, in all honesty, it really is awesome. Meet the Jaguar XFR-S Sportbrake, a red-hot (or blue-hot?) version of the rakish XF wagon that originally bowed at the Geneva Motor Show back in 2012. The formula here is pretty much plug-and-play: take the 5.0-liter supercharged V8 from the XFR-S and shove it in the wagon body, and add all of the necessary visual flair fitting of a properly powerful Jag. The end result is an estate that packs 542 horsepower, 502 pound-feet of torque, and the ability to sprint to 60 miles per hour in a scant 4.6 seconds. Meow.
This Jaguar joins a growing segment of ultra-hot wagons in Europe, rounded out by offerings like the Audi RS6 Avant and the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG longroof - the latter of which you can actually buy in North America. Sounds like the sort of comparison test we'd love to facilitate. Guess we'll have to leave that to our friends at Autocar, though.