Things are looking up for Jaguar. The company has just posted an almost £300 million profit – and it has just unveiled its fastest ever convertible.
At the Los Angeles motor show the Indian owned British brand confirmed that it has given its XK drop top the full blown XKR-S treatment.
With the wick turned up on the supercharged 5.0-litre V8 (to 404kW and 680Nm) the XKR-S in fact has more power than Jaguar’s XJ220 supercar from the early 1990s.
The run from 0 to 100km/h takes just 4.4 seconds, the same as the coupe.
As with the coupe, the XKR-S has not lost any weight – instead Jaguar has upped performance by upping power.
The car was honed on the famous Nurburgring circuit in Germany, the same test base used by Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz (and others) to develop their cars for decades.
Jaguar has had an engineering facility there since 2003 – but it has been testing cars there for the past 20 years.
Jaguar Australia brand manager Kevin Goult said the first shipment of XKR-S convertibles should arrive in Australia in early 2012 – and is already holding a “handful” of orders even before the price has been announced. The convertible is expected to carry a $20,000 premium over the coupe, bringing the price to $360,000 (plus-on roads) or thereabouts.
Goult expects the coupe to account for the majority of sales, but added that the XKR-S will be available to order as a regular part of the line-up.
“We’d like to get vehicles in Australia from [March] if possible but it will depend on build availability at Castle Bromwich [factory]. With XKR-S we seem to have a huge amount of demand globally … we’re expecting to see the same for the convertible.”
More LA Motor Show news on motoring.com.au
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