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Driving Jaguar's Continuation Lightweight E-Type

Something has happened to sports cars over the past 15-20 years. While reaching ever-higher levels of quantitative dominance the driving experience continues to become more sterile. Stability control, torque vectoring, variable electronic steering racks, lightning-quick dual-clutch automatic transmissions – all these make it easier to harness more power and drive faster than ever before. And yet too often it feels like something is missing. There is a growing divide between the capabilities of the modern performance car and the driver's sense of connection to the experience. In an era like the one we're in now, the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type hits you like a slap in the face. The story of the Lightweight E-Type goes back to 1963, when Jaguar set aside eighteen chassis numbers for a run of "Special GT E-Type" cars. These were factory-built racers with aluminum bodies, powered by the aluminum-block, 3.8-liter inline-six found in Jaguar's C- and D-Type LeMans racecars of the 1950s. Of the eighteen cars slated for production, only twelve were built and delivered to customers in 1964. For the next fifty years, those last six chassis numbers lay dormant, until their rediscovery a couple of years ago in a book in Jaguar's archives. In an era like the one we're in now, the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type hits you like a slap in the face. Jaguar Heritage, a section of Jaguar Land Rover's new Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) division, took on the task of researching the original Lightweight E-Types and developing the methods to create new ones. Every aspect of the continuation Lightweight E-Type, from the development of the tools and molds used to build the cars, to the hand-craftsmanship, reflects doing things the hard way. They may not build them like they used to, but with these six special E-Types, Jaguar comes awfuly close, if not better. Working alongside the design team, Jaguar Heritage made a CAD scan of one side of an original Lightweight E-Type body. That scan was flipped to create a full car's worth of measurements. That ensured greater symmetry and better fit than on the original Lightweight E-Types (which could see five to ten millimeter variance, left-to-right). The scan was also used to perfect the frame, while Jaguar looked through notes in its crash repair books to reverse-engineer the Lightweight E-Type's suspension. The team repurposed a lot of existing tooling for the continuation cars, and developed the rest from analysis of the CAD scan.

Jaguar appoints Joe Eberhardt as North American President

Jaguar Land Rover North America has appointed a new president, Joachim Eberhardt. The German exec, 50, had previously done stints at Chrysler Group, DaimlerChrysler UK, Mercedes-Benz USA and Daimler-Benz.
Eberhardt joins JLR NA in a good, but challenging time for the company. It's fresh off the launch of the Range Rover Sport and Jaguar F-Type, which have been subject to rave reviews, and its overall sales are up 21 percent over 2012. Still, as Automotive News points out, the two manufacturers face a fight to become the equal of A-list competitors like BMW and Mercedes in the eyes of consumers.
"Joe brings a proven industry track record and valuable global leadership experience in luxury sales, service and marketing. We look forward to Joe leading our North American team in working with our retail networks to further grow the business and better serve our customers," JLR's group sales operations director, Andy Goss, said.

Jaguar I-Pace named World Car of the Year

NEW YORK — The Jaguar I-Pace has been named World Car of the Year, an award meant to honor the most significant new car introduction and conferred by an international jury of automotive journalist judges. The group announced the winners of additional awards at the New York Auto Show, with the Audi A7 named World Luxury Car of the Year, the McLaren 720S recognized as World Performance Car of the Year, and the Suzuki Jimny named World Urban Car. The I-Pace additionally took home two other awards: World Car Design of the Year and World Green Car of the Year. The WCOTY team of 86 jurors hail from 24 countries, and the organization is independent and not tied to any publication. This is the 15th year for the awards. For this year's World Car of the Year award the top three finalists were the I-Pace, the Audi E-Tron, and the Volvo S60/V60. Previous WCOTY winners were the Volvo XC60 in 2018 and the Jaguar F-Pace in 2017. View 74 Photos