Jaguar World Magazine XJS V12 versus XKR Sept 08 Back Issue

Sixty years on from the unveiling of the
XK 120 at the London Motor Show – then
at Earls Court – Jaguar’s display at this
year’s show won’t have made quite the
same impact in the history books, although the
marque itself can’t really be blamed for that.
Now at the ExCel centre, the current incarnation
of the London Motor Show has plenty of potential,
but it has largely been ignored by manufacturers in
terms of significant new model debuts. Yes, there
were some ‘world debuts’ at the show – the Lotus
Evora amongst them – but most manufacturers save
the really important new cars for the Paris, Frankfurt,
Geneva or Detroit shows. BMW didn’t even have a
stand in London.
Jaguar, to its credit, did have a sizeable stand
presence and did show a new model derivative too,
the aptly named XK60 version of the current XK.
And, while that in itself is hardly going to shake the
world in the same way as the XK 120 did in 1948,
a little reading between the lines of recent news
stories in the last month reveals that exciting times
for the marque are not far away.
For starters, a thinly disguised ‘hot’ XF with Mike
Cross at the wheel was merrily blatting up the hill at
the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Though referred
to as a ‘prototype’, the car is likely to be the longrumoured
‘XFR’, which we expect to debut early next
year complete with a new 500bhp, 5-litre V8. In fact,
2009 promises to be a very exciting year for Jaguar.
A new 3.0-litre diesel engine is also widely
rumoured to be due to debut early next year, and
the build-up to the launch of the new XJ should also
begin in earnest. While there has been no official
confirmation of any of these three stories, if I were a
betting man and there were good odds offered on
Jaguar hitting the motoring headlines regularly next
year, I’d be raiding the piggy bank…