It’s Time for Jaguar to Race Again
At Pebble Beach, Jaguar released a whole host of juicy tidbits on the F-Type Project 7. The car is a homage to the Jaguar D-Type LeMans racers from the past. The hump behind the driver seat, the paint scheme, and many other smaller details.
The car, when brought stateside, will carry the price of $165,000. The car as it sits is definitely setup to be a track car, but most will never see the apex of a corner. So this got me thinking, should Jaguar return to sportscar racing?
As with all racing, it comes down to two things. Prestige for the brand, and cost of the program which is determined if the brand is doing well at the consumer level.
Prestige is definitely something Jaguar is working on lately to bring back to the brand. A week ago, the JLR Special Operations unit purchase $530 million worth of classic and vintage British cars to add to its collection. The company stated that it wanted to gather part of its history to look towards the future. In the collection were a bunch of ultra rare Jags, and a few racecars.
Second is money. Jaguar was for a long time, unprofitable. However, since being taken over by Tata, Jaguar and Land Rover have become cash cows. They just posted the brands best year of sales ever. The reason? Tata infused massive amounts of cash into the companies in order for them to put the time and effort into building world class cars.
Now though, the company is making huge headways into the competition from the Germans, and its coffers are full. That’s why you can get this special projects like the Project 7 or the Range Rover SVR.
With all the things Jaguar is doing, the acquisition of its heritage, building the P7 and SVR, it’s about time they return to racing. In my opinion, returning to LeMans would be of huge significance to the brand. Take a F-Type Coupe R, cage it, certify it from the FiA and see how well it can do against the rest of the world. They have the engineering talent, come on Jaguar, go racing again.