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Jaguar Land Rover to upgrade Castle Bromwich plant to build EVs

LONDON — Jaguar Land Rover is making a multi-million pound investment to build electric vehicles in Britain, in a major boost for the UK government and a sector hit by the slump in diesel sales and Brexit uncertainty. Britain's biggest car company, which built 30 percent of the UK's 1.5 million cars last year, will make a range of electrified vehicles at its Castle Bromwich plant in central England, beginning with its luxury saloon, the XJ. "The future of mobility is electric and, as a visionary British company, we are committed to making our next generation of zero-emission vehicles in the UK," Chief Executive Ralf Speth said on Friday. The announcement gives a boost to Britain's automotive sector hit this year by Honda and Ford's plans to close factories. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has highlighted the dangers of a no-deal Brexit and the need to maintain frictionless trade with the European Union, echoing warnings from the industry that just-in-time production could be hit by customs delays and additional bureaucracy. But it has signed a deal with workers at the Castle Bromwich factory to go from a five-day to a four-day working week with the same amount of hours which should allow the plant to operate more efficiently. Three of JLR's four European car plants are in Britain, giving it limited capacity elsewhere on the continent. The other, in Slovakia, only opened last year and is still being ramped up with other models allocated there. "We are making this investment because the ongoing Brexit uncertainty has left us with no choice, we had to act, for our employees and our business," JLR said. "We are committed to the UK as our home and will fight to stay here but we need the right deal." Both candidates to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, have both said they are prepared to take Britain out of the EU on Oct. 31 without a deal, although it is not their preferred option. Brexiteers have argued that the EUÂ’s biggest economy Germany, which exports hundreds of thousands of cars to Britain ever year, would do its utmost to protect that trade Friday's announcement comes after a turbulent few months for Jaguar which announced around 4,500 job cuts earlier in January and posted a 3.66 billion pound ($4.5 billion) loss in 2018/19.

This classic Jaguar XJ has a 720-hp ungentlemanly secret

Forget Tawny Kitaen. If you want to make a Jaguar XJ rock, just do what this guy did: stuff a heavily modified and turbocharged General Motors V8 under the hood, and take it to the track.
The video calls this Series 1 XJ a sleeper, but with its open exhaust and obvious turbo whistle, the once-gentlemanly sedan is anything but. The owner says that the engine is GM LQ9 V8 that has been stroked to 402 cubic inches putting out around 720 horsepower with 12 pounds of boost (in standard form, this 6.0-liter V8 was used in the second-gen Cadillac Escalade). Check out the video below to see what that kind of power does for this classic Jaguar in the eighth-mile.

Jaguar XE SV Project 8 slices record Nuburgring lap down to 7:18.361

No production four-door vehicle has ever come close to breaking a seven-minute lap on Germany's Nuburgring (we see you WRX STI Type RA NBR), but manufacturers are slowly inching toward the achievement a few seconds at a time. Jaguar announced that it returned to the famed racetrack with its XE SV Project 8 and clocked a 7:18.361 lap, a new sedan record that's 2.9 seconds faster than the Project 8's previous record.  When Jaguar debuted the Project 8 in 2017, it had the makings of a specialty car that would slither into the shadows as quickly as it blasted onto the scene. But it's been quite the opposite. Jaguar has continued development of the vehicle and offers three different versions, including a touring variant. Production has lasted into the 2019 model year, and we recently tested one to get a handle of just how monstrous the thing truly is.  Much can change and be learned in two years, though, and Jaguar wanted to follow up its first trip to the Nurburgring, where it posted a record-setting time of 7:21.23. Under the guidance of Project 8 development driver Vincent Radermecker, the Jag ran the circuit in 7:18.361 on July 8, 2019. It did so in two-seat track pack spec and on Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires. Jaguar made sure to clarify a detail about the run and the time. The 2017 time was done on the then-used 20.6-kilometer (12.8 miles) setup, and so was this time. But starting in 2019, the Nurburgring began officially recording times on the full 20.832-kilometer (12.94 miles) lap. Using the 20.832 lap, the Project 8 recorded a time of 7:23.164. With that run, the 592-horsepower supercharged Project 8 is the first vehicle to set an official whole lap record in the mid-range production car class. Watch the 7:18 run in 360-degree video below.   This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.