Nurburg, Germany – This, says Jaguar, is the most powerful, most extreme, street-legal Jaguar yet, putting even the iconic XJ220 in the shade.
It’s the second Collector’s Edition performance special from Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations, and it’s called the XE SV Project 8, simply because it follows on from 2014’s F-Type Project 7.
What you see here is a prototype, running its first shakedown test at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, where Jaguar maintains a workshop and test facility, so the development engineers can work on improving the chassis set-up of new models without having to go back to England after every test session.
It has the hottest version yet of Jaguar Land Rover’s five-litre supercharged V8, tweaked until it squeaked and delivering in excess of 440kW. Full specifications will be released just before the Project 8 makes its first public appearance at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on 30 June.
No more than 300 will then be hand-built at SVO’s technical centre in Coventry for sale worldwide, and the price, we are assured, will reflect that level of performance and exclusivity.