Engineering fine-tuning on the new Jaguar XE SV Project 8 has almost finished, ahead of production which is scheduled to commence in June. The Project 8 is the fastest-ever four-door sedan Jaguar has ever produced. The hand assembled car will be limited to just 300 units. The Project 8 is priced from £149,995 in UK, the equivalent of roughly $270,000 Canadian.

“The fastest high performance saloon in the world just keeps getting faster,” said John Edwards, Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations Managing Director. “The Jaguar XE SV Project 8 development team at Special Vehicle Operations keep pushing boundaries – the drive to do that is in our designers’ and engineers’ blood.”

Project 8 can accelerate from 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) in just 3.3 seconds on its way to a top speed of 200 mph (321 km/h). in 2017 it set a new four-door production car lap record around the Nürburgring Nordschleife of 7 minutes and 21.23 seconds, which broke the old four-door record by more than 10 seconds.

“With Project 8 we set out to deliver a fast, fun and engaging car that encourages you to explore its performance,” said Mark Stanton, Special Vehicle Operations Director. “Our lap record at the Nürburgring proves we have achieved that, but now we believe we can go faster. We’re continually honing every functional aspect of the car, focusing on marginal gains to make it even quicker yet still accessible to drive.”

With a 592 hp version of Jaguar’s supercharged 5.0-litre V8, Project 8 is the most powerful Jaguar road car to date. Project 8 is the second Collector’s Edition Jaguar from Special Vehicle Operations, the first was the 2014 F-TYPE Project 7.

“The good thing about building only 300 cars, all hand-made, is that you can keep developing the car right up to the start of production,” said David Pook, Project 8’s Vehicle Dynmaics Manager. “And we’ve done just that. The springs have got stiffer and so have the engine mounts. The suspension arm bushes have changed. The brakes have been refined for the exact pedal feel and performance we want. This has all been done to make the car even more responsive and to handle even better. But the biggest changes are to software. They are all small adjustments – to improve performance, feel, responsiveness, refinement. We keep honing the whole car, relentlessly. We’re never really happy. We keep challenging ourselves to keep improving the car, and push boundaries. It’s certainly even faster, better handling and more responsive than it was six months ago. All that effort has been worth it.”

The four-wheel-drive Project 8 has genuine motor racing technology including adjustable ride height, camber, front splitter and rear wing, all standard equipment. It also has a flat underbody, a differential oil cooler and a production car first, F1-style ceramic wheel bearings. The front uprights, two-part upper wishbones, balljoints in place of rubber bushes, twin coil springs, dampers, lower suspension bushes, anti-roll bars and latest specification carbon ceramic brakes are all new and exclusive to the Project 8. The only carryover body components from the standard XE are the roof and front door skins, both made from aluminium. The vented hood and flared front wings and bumpers are made from lightweight carbon fibre. The result of this state-of-the-art technology is improved driver feel and confidence, sharper handling responses and exceptional durability, allowing repeated high-speed track driving.

“Power delivery and gear shifts are the most visceral we have ever offered on a Jaguar – every 1/100th of a second improvement in shift time adds up over a complete lap of the Nürburgring,” said Stanton. “Rest assured, no stone has been left unturned in our mission to make this the most rewarding Jaguar driver’s car ever.”

In its most extreme settings, and in ‘Track’ mode, Project 8 delivers 122 kg of downforce at 186 mph (300 km/h), 25 percent more than its nearest rival. It is the first Jaguar to offer a Track mode, standard on all versions, which tailors driveline and stability control systems for circuit use by sharpening throttle and steering responses and tuning the dampers to their most aggressive setting.