The F-TYPE, Jaguar's all-new aluminium two-seater sports car,
will make its global debut in production form at the Paris Motor
Show on 27th September.
Adrian Hallmark, Global Brand Director, Jaguar Cars, said: "The
unveiling of the F-TYPE in Paris will be a truly significant day in
Jaguar's history as it will mark the company's return to the sports
car market, a market it originally helped to create.
"As its sporting forebears did in their era, the F-TYPE will
break new ground by delivering stunning sports car performance
while vividly demonstrating Jaguar's cutting-edge engineering
technologies and world-class design excellence. The next step in
Jaguar's sporting bloodline is about to become reality."
The F-TYPE will be launched as a convertible with a choice of
three petrol engines: 340PS and 380PS versions of Jaguar's all-new
3.0-litre supercharged V6, and a new derivative of its existing
supercharged 5.0-litre V8. All will drive the rear wheels through
an eight-speed transmission and will be equipped with Stop/Start
technology.
Prototype test programme
Following the F-TYPE's 'camouflaged' public drive at the Goodwood
Festival of Speed in June of this year, testing of the final
verification prototypes has continued in some of the harshest
environments in the world.
As its name suggests, this test programme is designed to verify
the staggering amount of design work that was carried out by
Jaguar's engineers in the 'virtual world', a process in which the
company is an industry leader.
More than half-a-million separate F-TYPE design analyses were
carried out comprising 10-million CPU hours of processing, creating
more than 300TB of data. Had that same amount of initial design
analysis been completed on physical cars, the number of prototype
F-TYPEs built would have filled the majority of the UK's motorway
network bumper-to-bumper.
The result of all that 'virtual' design work is that Jaguar's
engineers are currently concentrating on honing the performance of
the physical verification prototypes, to ensure the production
F-TYPE delivers truly focused sports car driving reward.
Said Ian Hoban, Jaguar's Vehicle Line Director: "When you are
working on a Jaguar sports car the expectations of the world are
huge. We're really pleased how the attributes have translated from
the virtual simulation work we've done into the physical world.
"Now, we're refining and adding those last few percentage points
- that true element of honing which the Jaguar test team are
delivering - which will turn a great sports car into an exceptional
one."
Editor's notes: To view a film about F-TYPE verification
testing, and for images of prototype cars, please visit www.media.jaguar.com
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