It's been just a few days since Jaguar has officially unveiled the all-new XE with an extravagant event in London laden with pomp and circumstance, but the British automaker isn't resting on its laurels just yet. The Leaping Cat marque is currently testing at least seven test mules of the XE: six at the Nurburgring and one up in the Colorado High Rockies.
Jaguar will offer a single variant of the XE at first - the XE S, with its F-Type-sourced supercharged V6. With 340 horsepower and 332 lb-ft (450 Nm) of torque handled by a ZF-designed eight-speed automatic, the sports sedan can accelerate to 60 in a mere 4.9 seconds. After the Jaguar XE S will hit U.K. showrooms in 2015 and the U.S. in 2016, the British automaker will then release the rest of the Ingenium family of engines for the XE, namely four-pot turbocharged gasoline and diesel motors, all expected to displace under 2,000 cubic centimeters.
A recent report from the British automotive media suggests that a high performance XE SVR is in the pipeline as well. As the name suggests, this variation of the breed will take on the BMW M3. That's why the supercharged 5-liter V8 is rumored to be shoehorned under its hood. Expect north of 431 horsepower, the oomph produced by the 3-liter twin-turbo inline six-cylinder of the BMW M3.
The previously mentioned models may be a few months or even a year away, but Jag engineers are already working on these cars. Take what our carparazzi spotted at Jaguar's technological center near Nurburgring - no less than six heavily camouflage XEs, sporting minor visual differences in areas such as the front and rear bumpers, as well as different alloy wheels and tire sizes. Then there's the video attached below, depicting a pre-production Jaguar XE testing in the Colorado high country.
Editor's note: does anybody else see a little bit of Ford Fusion/Mondeo in the headlights of the Jag XE?
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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