2007 Jaguar XK8

2007 Jaguar XK8 2007 Jaguar XK8
First Drive Review

These are the first pictures of the 2006 Jaguar XK8, but you have seen this car before. The Jaguar Advanced Lightweight coupe made a surprise appearance at this year's Detroit auto show in January. It was not a concept car but the new production model with a number of glitzy embellishments.

By June, Jaguar had given up the pretense. A lightly camouflaged XK was thrust up the hill-climb at the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed in southern England by Mike Cross, chief engineer for vehicle integrity, the man responsible for making Jaguars feel and behave like Jaguars should.

The real thing, undisguised, would appear at the Frankfurt show in September, with the cars going on sale in April 2006.

Why show a new car so long before it goes on sale? Earlier this year, Joe Greenwell, then Jaguar chairman, explained, "We had a rough 2004, so this year I wanted to hit the ground running." He referred to the controversial decision to stop car assembly at the historic plant at Browns Lane in Coventry, where the XK8 and all its illustrious predecessors, from the XK120 through the E-type, have been built.

The XK8 gets a fresh start, owing little to its current namesake. It is closely related to the latest XJ, with a bonded and riveted aluminum monocoque structure, and the coupe and the convertible will be built on the same line, parallel to the XJ, at Jaguar's Castle Bromwich plant.

Old XK
New XK

Compared with the current XK, the new model is about half an inch longer and 2.4 inches wider and sits on a wheelbase 6.4 inches longer. Thanks to its construction and a weight saving of 200 pounds, the new XK "accelerates faster, handles better, uses less fuel, and has improved safety performance," in the words of Russ Varney, the chief program engineer, who also claims it is "the most technically advanced Jaguar ever."

The standard model continues with the 294-hp, 4.2-liter V-8 engine used in the XK since 2003. Jaguar proudly asserts that its power-to-weight ratio is 10 percent better than the Mercedes SL500's. Jaguar also claims 0-to-60-mph acceleration "comfortably below" six seconds and a quarter-mile within 0.2 second of the current XKR's time (13.8 at 105 mph). There will be a new XKR, with more than 400 horsepower from its supercharged engine, but not until 2007. The XK, for the first time in a Jaguar, has fingertip paddles attached to the steering wheel for manual ratio selection, linked to a ZF six-speed automatic.