1995 Jaguar Xjr Supercharged 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.

Reliving the Jaguar XJ220 with a father-son duo

Jaguar may have canceled the C-X75 project, but there was a time when the Leaping Cat marque did make supercars. Sure, there were the XJR-9 and XJR-15 homologation specials made by TWR, but more famous was the XJ220. Although its reign may have lasted only a year before the McLaren F1 came along, for a brief time in the early 1990s, the XJ220 was the fastest car in the world – which is even more impressive when you consider that it was only powered by a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 when its rivals were using mostly V8s and V12s. That makes the XJ220 a rather noteworthy supercar from the dawn of the 200-mph era. The thing is, while Jaguar has come to embrace the XJ220 as an exceptional part of its history, it doesn't have the time or energy to devote to servicing the 275 that were made between 1992 and 1994. So it turns to Don Law Racing. The father-son team – made up of a master mechanic and his hot-shoe offspring – is tasked with keeping the XJ220 alive both in body and in spirit, and do so with a great deal of well-deserved pride. Drive went out to their workshop in Staffordshire to tell their story.

2019 Jaguar I-Pace pricing announced, starting at $70,495

The Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicle arrives in the United States later this year with a starting price of $70,495, including destination, putting it head-to-head with luxury EV rivals like the Tesla Model S sedan and Model X crossover. Jaguar's fully-electric crossover is powered by two electric motors, one at the front and another at the rear, with the battery pack nestled in an underfloor, positioned in-between the front and rear axles. This powertrain not only provides the all-wheel-drive I-Pace with a low center of gravity and perfect 50:50 weight distribution, it delivers a total of 394 horsepower and 512 pound-feet of torque. According to Jaguar's stopwatch, the I-Pace accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in only 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of 124 mph. That lives up to the performance level a customer expects from Jaguar – not to mention being a match for the straight-line speed of Tesla's offerings at this price range. It should be noted, however, that despite aligning on price and performance with models S and X, the I-Pace is a bit closer in size to the Model 3. As we've already noted, the Jaguar's 90-kWh lithium-ion battery pack provides a useful range of up to 240 miles between charges. When you're running low on juice, a 100-hW DC fast charger will provide 80 percent of range in only 40 minutes. That's still a considerable amount of time compared to filling up with gasoline, though it's much better than the hours-long wait EVs usually required only a few years ago. Plugging in at home does require more patience, however. Using a 230-volt, 32-amp Level 2 home-charger requires just over 10 hours to recharge your I-Pace. Three trim levels are offered: S, SE, and HSE. There will also be a fully-loaded, one-year-only "First Edition" based on the HSE trim level, which carries a price of $86,895. In fact, it's very easy to start adding options – and a heftier tab – onto the base price of the I-Pace. Available safety features on the entry-level model include blind-spot assist, adaptive cruise control with steering assist, high-speed emergency braking, and a 360-degree surround-view camera. The First Edition model is pretty much the upper limit of I-Pace pricing, and comes fitted with all those safety features, along with a full leather interior, 20-inch alloy wheels, a 15-speaker Meridian surround sound stereo, and premium LED headlights. It's worth noting that Jaguar includes a substantial 8-year/100,000-mile battery warranty with each I-Pace.