If ever there was a car that embodied JLR’s occasionally scatterbrained, all-or-nothing approach to product development in the ‘10s, it was the Jaguar XE SV Project 8. (Of the cars that made it to production, at any rate: obviously the Nobel Prize for Pie-in-the-Blue-Sky thinking goes to the C-X75, a concept so overtly out there that its maker could hardly bear to look at it before burying it six feet deep.) At the time though, what Jaguar really needed was a powerfully lovely and confidently priced halo model that would serve as a showroom beacon for the XE. Something a bit special, but also vaguely attainable. Something everyone could get behind.
So what did it do? It let SVO build an absurdly fast, money-no-object super saloon that was exceptionally good at one thing (going around a circuit) and then ensured that only 300 people globally would be able to buy one. Oh and despite designing and engineering the thing in Britain, and making it in Britain and Britain being the most important market, it opted to make it left-hand drive only. And charge a fiver shy of £150,000 to buy one.
Incredibly, the market did not pounce on the thing like it was the second coming of sliced bread. Partly because Jaguar had done none of the work to get there (the Project 8 was the sort the thing you build after your V8-powered, range-topping volume saloon is declared a generational talent; it isn’t a jumping-off point) and partly because it was too nakedly extreme for a lot of people - and looked it. Accordingly, Jaguar went back to the drawing board and decreed that it would build a toned-down Touring version of the Project 8 in the hope of shoehorning some more names onto the waiting list.
Handily, one of those names belonged to Hanno Kirner, a vastly experienced industry exec who was then leading Tata’s fledgling efforts ‘in the battery space’ (he’s since been appointed the CEO of Dyson). While Mr Kirner’s day job might have been focused on the most efficient way of moving ions about the place, he evidently knew a thing or two about how to spec a performance car because the black Touring he came up with (the only one produced, according to our seller) is the closest thing we’ve seen to what the XE SV should’ve been from the start: still a little menacing, sure - but in a good way, and handsome and usable with it.
To call it Q car-ish is probably pushing it a bit: if you’ve never seen a Project 8 in real life (perfectly possible) those arches, nestled on a body that shares precious little with a standard XE, are unavoidable. As are the dramatic track widths. And that front end, which manages to be about 80 per cent grille. But without the fixed wing or a look-at-me shade of paint, it’s not hard to imagine this SV drawing precious few looks in a supermarket car park. Until the supercharged V8 coughs into life, of course.
That doesn’t erase the price to be paid (not advertised here but here’s another by way of comparison) or the fact that the Project 8 was the wrong car for the moment at launch, but with Jaguar’s all-electric future now firmly on the horizon, it’s easier to forgive a swing-for-the-fences 600hp saloon. Especially as the SV was remarkably good to drive on the road. Moreover, because a chastened JLR never plucked up the courage to replace it with anything, its place in history is assured, too. And thanks to Mr Kirner’s restraint, and the vanishing rarity of the Touring generally, you’re probably looking at one of the last legitimately great Jaguar saloons. A time and a place for everything, eh?
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