Why is Jaguar stalking the world’s supercars?

Jaguar are busy quietly measuring up a wide range of mid-engined supercars. Are they pushing ahead with the Jaguar C-X75, or something else?

It’s all too common for car makers to buy product from their competitors. Either to benchmark an existing or future car. To find out just how it’s been put together. To see if there’s anything innovative to be discovered.

It makes sense in a competitive world to know just what the opposition are up to.

There’s a cost involved, of course.  Which is all fine and dandy; after all, the odd £25k or so for an average car isn’t going to break many car makers.

But what do you do if you’re planning a supercar? Not just any old supercar, but a hypercar. Something in the upper echelons of the car makers art?

However robust your balance sheet it’s going to be quite difficult to justify a million each to buy a Veyron and a Zonda and a Koenigesegg and an Enzo and.. just to have a good look and a measure up.

So you need to take a different tack. And that seems to be what Jaguar are doing at the moment.

We’ve had a couple of calls in the last week or two to tell us that Jaguar has been begging an audience with a range of the finest hypercars on the planet, and has come equipped with tape measure and laptop.

So far we know they’ve been to see a ‘Private’ collection and a rather more ‘Public’ one. And in both cases the focus of attention was mid-engined hypercars.

We know they’ve carefully measured a Zonda and a Koenigsegg and an Enzo. And others. And despite some front and rear engined supercars being available, the man from Jaguar wasn’t interested

Does this mean Jaguar are pushing ahead with a production version of the Jaguar C-X75? Or are they planning a more conventional hypercar to sit atop the Jaguar range as a halo?

The truth is, we don’t know. But if we ask Jaguar we do know what will come back: “We don’t comment on speculation about potential future product.” Jaguar may not, but we do.

And there is definitely something rumbling in the Jungle.