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Jaguar XK Revival Still Happening Despite SUV Dominance

The Jaguar XK did pretty much the same job as the F-Type. It was an awesome-looking British car with a powerful supercharged engine that made for great YouTube videos. However, they discontinued it in 2014.
Jaguar XK Revival Still Happening Despite SUV Dominance 11 photos
Photo: Jaguar
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Numerous reports suggested it was coming back, most of which were based on interviews with a very famous car designer who loves to draw sleek, low coupes. It's even been said that Callum's team made a complete design proposal that never got approved for production, partly because the F-Type was doing so well already.

Sadly, not every car Ian Callum wants or talks about in half a dozen interviews can sell well. Right now, SUVs dominate Jaguar's sales charts even though the company has a lineup full of sedans of varying sizes.

Last year, the F-Pace represented about 40% of all Jaguar deliveries. Despite this, the JLR head of product planning, Hanno Kirner still believes in sports cars with the feline emblem.

Kirner told Autocar that Jaguar "will continue to invest in sports cars," adding that he used the plural on purpose. So not just one body style, but at least two.

He also added that the XK could become "a body variant" of the F-Type. Now, previous reports also indicated that the rebirthed coupe would ride on the same platform as, but we're not entirely sure what that means. In fact, since this is a design exercise in the making, we could have a shooting brake or a four-door coupe on our hands. Jaguar has always played the "more affordable than the Germans" cads so well.

Hybrid engines are briefly talked about in the interview, though the sound of a sports car is something Jaguar values deeply. Unfortunately, the future of the XK won't become any clearer soon, as the F-Type will migrate to a new generation soon, and that could bring about drastic engine changes.

Given the right incentive, Jaguar will easily make anything we want. But if we have to wait another three years for it... well, we might all be driving Teslas by then.
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About the author: Mihnea Radu
Mihnea Radu profile photo

Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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