#Jaguar

You don’t need to suffer from metathesiophobia to be uncomfortable with the wide variety of changes in the modern automotive industry.

Monostable shifters provide no firm detent when you’ve selected Drive, and often require a separate button for Park. Handbrakes that offer a level of modulation are quickly disappearing, replaced by electronic parking brakes. Touchscreens that require multiple menu steps — and seconds in which eyes are diverted from the road — are increasingly part and parcel of new car purchases at high and low price points.

Change is happening so fast and so often and in such unnecessary ways that there was much rejoicing when Honda revealed the 2018 Accord with both a volume and tuning knob, as if that was a bigger story than the dead V6, the discontinued coupe, and the seats being moved closer together to create an aura of space.

Fortunately, Jaguar will remain among the puritanical ranks. Jaguar will stick with the spartans. Jaguar will forego flashy transformations for the sake of primitive positioning. Jaguar’s climate controls will be operated via knobs for the foreseeable future. For old times’ sake.

Fortunately, premium automakers have not adopted a One Size Fits All approach. We have choices. Plenty of choices.

Increasingly, however, we are seeing a One Look Fits All Sizes methodology, limiting our ability to distinguish between a 3 Series, 5 Series, and 7 Series at BMW; between A4s, A6s, and A8s at Audi; or between C, E, and S-Class sedans at Mercedes-Benz.

With the second-generation XF appearing all but identical to the first XF, and the subsequent launch of the entry-level XE closely resembling an abbreviated XF, Jaguar’s guilty of the same crime against differentiation.

Fortunately, famed Jaguar design director Ian Callum says future Jaguar designs won’t be revealed merely as S, M, and L versions of the same t-shirt.

Not to be confused with the electric Jaguar I-Pace crossover, the 2018 Jaguar E-Pace was unveiled July 13 with a blend of F-Type and F-Pace styling cues.

Set to challenge the BMW X1, Mercedes-Benz GLA, Audi Q3, and Infiniti QX30 when it goes on sale in the United States in January 2018, the Jaguar E-Pace will be marketed with standard all-wheel drive, a nine-speed automatic, and turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder powerplants generating either 246 or 296 horsepower.

Globally, the E-Pace will quickly become Jaguar’s best-selling model. In the United States, Jaguar expects the E-Pace to, at the very least, sell just as often as the larger F-Pace, which has generated 19,575 U.S. sales for the previously struggling Jaguar brand since going on sale in May 2016.

Jaguar’s U.S. sales averaged 3,400 units per month over the last year, a huge turnaround after a decade in which Jaguar’s U.S. dealers sold roughly 1,200 cars per month.

Most of the credit for Jaguar’s U.S. resurgence belongs to the brand’s first-ever utility vehicle, the F-Pace.

A fair chunk of the credit also belongs to the XE, the first entry-level sedan in Jaguar’s lineup since the X-Type disappeared after the 2008 model year.

And some of the credit belongs to an engine formula that’s earned more than its fair share of negative press over the last two years: diesel.

Jaguar is doing another run of its extremely limited production SVO cars. We haven’t seen a new one since the decked-out Project 7 F-Type arrived in 2014, adorned with its conspicuous spoiler and upgraded internals. The British automaker is now doing the same for the XE SV Project 8, resulting in the most powerful sedan in its long history.

In addition to some extremely loud bodywork, Project 8 is equipped with a 592 horsepower, 5.0-liter supercharged V8, connected to an eight-speed automatic transmission delivering power to all four of its wheels. Jaguar claims it can hit 60 mph in a scant 3.3 seconds and possesses a top speed of 200 mph, which also makes it the quickest accelerating model Jag has ever produced. It’s one hell of a refresh for the subdued XE.

We’ve got a special treat for you today — this glorious Aston Martin Lagonda from that future dystopia now long past, 1984. And futuristic it was, when you consider this car was sprawled across luxuriously carpeted showrooms beginning in 1976.

So let’s go back in time. Is your leisure suit ready?

The engineers at Jaguar have crafted a new engine for the automaker, essentially filling in the last power gap in the brand’s lineup. Carrying the Ingenium name and a 30t badge, the automaker’s latest in-house mill is a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder designed to fill the space between the automaker’s 2.0-liter turbodiesel and 3.0-liter supercharged V6.

What kind of power, speed and fuel economy will this bring to the 2018 XE, XF and F-Pace, you asl? Jaguar has provided us with the answers.

It’s always nice to see a station wagon in North America. Crossovers may have caught on faster than fidget spinners in a wildfire, but they’ll never be able to offer the same diving dynamics of a lower-slug automobile — leaving room for wagons to persist.

Likewise, rebranding estate cars as shooting brakes or “sportbrakes” is helping give the niche segment some much-needed panache, extending its appeal beyond the true believers. Wagons have long since become an endangered species in certain parts of the world but, thanks to conservation efforts from several carmakers, we might not lose them entirely.

One of those companies is Jaguar. It has yet to abandon the cargo-happy bodystyle and has even seen fit to bring the XF Sportbrake to the United States for the very first time — possibly because it realizes wagon lovers are now one of the most underserved demographics in autodom.

Ian Callum, the director of design at Jaguar, spoke recently at Coventry University’s National Transport Design Centre on various subjects related to the auto industry.

Callum, a Coventry University alumnus, touched on automotive history, autonomous vehicles, the buying process, even Jaguar itself.

Ian Callum also had something to say about the V8 engine, according to CAR Magazine.

Long live the Queen.

Long live the V8.

Ralf Speth isn’t having it. Across Europe governments are cracking down on the use of diesel vehicles in a bid to lower air pollution, especially in the Jaguar Land Rover CEO’s own country. London has announced plans to levy stiff charges on anyone driving a diesel-powered vehicle through central areas of the capital starting in early 2019, adding fuel to the anti-diesel fire. Paris, Berlin and Athens also plan to ban the technology.

With compression ignition still a significant part of the automaker’s engine lineup — both in Europe and North America — Speth recently defended the technology’s importance in a finger-pointing spiel. The world needs diesel, he claimed, and the media (and Volkswagen) haven’t done anything to help the situation.

Jaguar announced at the New York Auto Show a refresh for its F-Type sports coupe that lops two cylinders off the base model V6. It won’t be quite that indelicate of a procedure and the supercharged 3.0-liter V6 will likely remain the most popular choice.

For 2018, the F-Type will provide six individual engine options. The F-Type will persist with its 340 horsepower six-cylinder mill, or 380 horsepower if you option for the R-Dynamic model. Next year’s Jags will also see the return or the previous 5.0-liter V8 trims — including the 550 hp R and 575 hp SVR. However, if you’re more into the F-Type for its charming looks than its bonkers performance, Jaguar will soon offer a 2.0-liter turbo for under $60,000.

Jaguar’s U.S. volume more than doubled in 2016, rising to a 12-year high thanks to the launch of an all-new entry-level sedan and the brand’s first-ever SUV.

The XE and F-Pace, which now account for nearly three-quarters of Jaguar’s U.S. volume, have taken the brand to a high-volume place (relatively speaking) Jaguar hasn’t visited since the X-Type roamed dealer forecourts.

One year ago, those models didn’t exist, and Jaguar was selling fewer than 50 cars per day in America.

Now Jaguar’s on fire. Year-over-year growth is explosive, with Jaguar’s U.S. volume more than doubling in each of the last ten months and more than tripling in each of 2016’s final three months.

That level of growth can’t be sustained. Jaguar Land Rover North America’s CEO Joachim Eberhardt told Wards Auto, “We have to continue to grow, but we are not looking to grow at the pace we have been.”

All that growth “still does not make us a giant luxury brand,” Eberhardt says. “It makes us a bigger luxury brand that now has scale but is still special and exclusive.”

There’s the key word. Exclusive. “I think that is part of our appeal and something to focus on maintaining,” claims Eberhardt.

What a revolutionary approach for a premium auto brand.

Jaguar Land Rover unleashed a volley of trademarks over past month, offering a glimpse of some of the names it might use on upcoming models. However, JLR took something of shock-and-awe approach while filing, so it would be unlikely to see all of these affixed to the side of a new model.

One of the more standout monikers is XJS, Jaguar’s former luxury grand tourer. Absent for two decades, Jag could commit sacrilege and bring it back as something other than a large two-door without much blowback from the general public. Those who remember the original would no doubt be appalled. The company also trademarked Westminster, which likely denotes a particular blue paint Jaguar was fond of during nineties and not a specific model. JLR also slipped in a filing for Freestyle —sharing a title with a crossover utility vehicle that sold incredibly well before Ford changed its name.

New advancements at Jaguar keep on coming. In addition to the new Ingenium engine we reported on earlier today, Jaguar has also announced an in-car payment system for use exclusively at Shell stations.

Gassing up will soon be such a breeze for Jag owners, they’ll want to do it all the time. Shell no doubt encourages this behavior.

Another relic of Jaguar’s ill-fated relationship with Ford has been kicked to the curb.

For 2018, Jaguar ditches its old 2.0-liter turbo and adds a new base four-cylinder engine to its lineup, bringing more power and efficiency to the XE sedan and a new starting point for its XF and F-Pace.