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Jaguar Land Rover opens winter testing facility in Minnesota

As it begins the rollout of the all-wheel-drive Jaguar XJ and XF models, Jaguar Land Rover has just announced that it has opened a new facility in northern Minnesota for winter testing. Located in International Falls, MN (on the US and Canadian border), the British automaker says it is one of the coldest locations in the Continental US. Jaguar's new Instinctive All Wheel Drive system was developed primarily to help sell more cars in the northern US, so it only makes sense to open a testing area in the US as well.
With temperatures that can drop to minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit, International Falls was chosen to mimic some of the worst weather a Jaguar or Land Rover will ever see. The grounds house testing chambers, various road surfaces and even a frozen lake. This new facility complements the hot-weather testing grounds in Phoenix, AZ.
The official press release is posted below.

Jaguar and Land Rover to consolidate dealerships

Jaguar and Land Rover are set to merge their sales facilities, according to Inside Line. Jaguar Land Rover North America President Andy Gross says 45 percent of Jaguar owners also have an SUV in their stable, so it makes sense to give customers as much exposure to the cat's high-riding cousins and possible. The number of overall outlets will remain the same, and the brands will reportedly remain separate on the showroom floor, however.
So far, just one dealer has made the move to combine under the roof of one 68,000 square-foot facility in Paramus, New Jersey (above), though a further 20 are ready to make the shift and become Jaguar Land Rover outlets. Gross believes the shift is necessary so that his company's dealer network will accurately reflect the company's products. We'll see how cozy the brands are when Jaguar starts rolling out its own SUVs in a few years.

Land Rover Defender V8 vs. Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 | V8 4x4s square off on paper

Land Rover pulled the sheet off its 2022 Defender on Wednesday, introducing another high-performance V8 to the off-road segment. This time, it's a 5.0-liter, supercharged V8 boasting 518 horsepower. It will be available in both the Defender 90 and 110 models. In the former, Land Rover says it can crack off a 0-60 run in just 4.9 seconds on its way to a top speed of 149 mph. The long-wheelbase 110 will be a bit slower, but "slow" probably isn't the right adjective to use here at all.  But Land Rover isn't the only automaker offering a high-performance variant of its off-road SUV. While Jeep may have been sneered at for presenting the 2021 Wrangler Rubicon 392 on the heels of the 2021 Ford Bronco's introduction, it starts to make a lot more sense in this context. There's reportedly a high-output Bronco on the way, too, so call Jeep the dinosaur of the group all you want, but you can't put a price on being first. Well, you can, actually, but that's not the point.  Thankfully, both Land Rover and Jeep have provided enough specs for us to rough out a comparison chart. Since the Rubicon 392 is offered only in four-door guise, we're looking at the long-wheelbase Defender 110 as its direct competitor here. Have a look: There are a few caveats to mention off the top. For starters, we don't have an official curb weight for the V8-powered Defender yet, as Land Rover has not finalized its U.S. specs. We used the European figures (as provided by a spokesperson), which we expect to be accurate within about 50 pounds. The 0-60 time provided by Land Rover was for the Defender 90, which is smaller and somewhat lighter than the 110. When equipped with the inline-6, the Defender 110 is about a tenth of a second slower to 60 than the Defender 90, so we figure it should be roughly the same for the V8.  While the Defender has nearly 50 horsepower on the Wrangler, that advantage disappears thanks to the Land Rover V8's monster weight penalty, which will fall somewhere between 600 and 700 pounds depending on equipment. Yikes. On the flip side, however, the Land Rover has the edge in top speed, and it's not even close. Chalk that up to the tires, we suspect. We know for a fact that the Rubicon 392's all-terrains dictate its speed limiter; Jeep's own engineers told us as much. This could make for a (hypothetically) interesting drag race, as the Jeep's advantage off the line may evaporate once triple digits come into play.