It was the end of June when Jaguar lifted the veils off the XE SV Project 8, the quickest and most extreme road car ever produced by Jaguar. A heavily-modified XE with high-octane gasoline running through its veins, the SV Project 8 was crowned the new king of the ‘Ring. Not bad, isn’t it?
Looking at the bigger picture, Jaguar is boasting about an 11-second faster lap than the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio on a 22.8-kilometer (14.2-mile) circuit. And what’s wrong with that is, the XE SV Project 8 is a hand-built car with over-the-top upgrades that has little to do with the XE. The Giulia Quadrifoglio, on the other hand, is much closer to lesser Giulia models and a lot cheaper than the XE SV Project 8. How much cheaper?
$187,500 compared to $73,500. In other words, the starting price of the XE SV Project 8 would get you two examples of Alfa Romeo’s super sedan, as well as one unit of the Giulia Ti. The huge difference in pricing combined with the small difference in lap times is why Jaguar’s Nurburgring record is – dare I say it – underwhelming at best. To boot, this little argument comes from a guy who got into cars because of Jaguar.
Limited to 300 copies, the XE SV Project 8 gets its mojo from a supercharged 5.0-liter V8 that develops 592 horsepower. That’s a lot more than the Giulia Quadrifoglio, though the devil is in the details. The most telling difference is how the two models send the suck-squeeze-bang-blow to the road, with the Jaguar boasting AWD versus Alfa Romeo’s RWD.
A record is a record, however, so tough luck to Alfa Romeo and better luck next time. Whoever will break the 7-minute 21-second lap time of the XE SV Project 8 won’t have it easy, but some voices claim that’s not the case because the new track surface will offer more grip than ever before, thus enabling harder cornering action.
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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