It’s now clear that Jaguar are about to announce a new, hard core version of the XKR, based on last year’s XKR Goodwood Special.
Last year Jaguar took a ‘Hot’ XKR to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The colour was a very un-Jaguar-like lime green and the graphics down the side were certainly less than subtle. But it performed admirably well in the hands of Jaguar’s Mike Cross and was obviously pointing towards a more hard-edged XKR.
The Goodwood XKR had a sportier exhaust, a lowered ride height and 21″ alloys as well as the paint job and graphics. Some tweaking was also said to have delivered around 525bhp, all of which pointed to a Jaguar XKR-S turning up at some point. Which we thought it had – sort of.
Jaguar announced the changes for the 2010 / 2011 MY on the XK back in February. And in the mix came a couple of option packs – the Speed Pack and the Black Pack – which our Colonial Cousins were sticking together to make the Jaguar XKR Ultimate Edition, complete with a de-restricted top speed, side graphics, revised front splitter and bigger rear spoiler and an Active Differential Control. A good stab at a refined production version of the Goodwood XKR. Or so we thought.
It’s now clear that Jaguar are about to announce a hard-core XKR based on the Goodwood Special. We don’t have all the info yet – although we expect an announcement this time next week and a debut at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed – but you can be sure the new XKR hardcore version (Jaguar XKR-S? Jaguar XKR-R? Any other guesses?) will get a more focused suspension setup, more power and will probably shout its credentials in a rather un-Jaguar kind of way.
Which all sounds rather appealing. As long as it’s not lime green.




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