Save the CX-75
Discussion
Autocar and others got to drive the prototypes at Gaydon last week
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-video/video-jaguar-c-...
Somebody at New Jaguar grew a pair and stuck their hand up to point out that "hypercar" customers won't buy a four cylinder engine. Hurrah! Sense at last, just a shame that same person wasn't there when they pulled the V12 out of the XJ220 and replaced it with a Metro engine.
Tata is doing a fine job of growing Jaguar and Land Rover and pushing them upmarket to a better profit position by developing products customers really want. In fact prices are pushing towards the £100K mark for both brands and will soon go over the magic ton with future performance models. In this framework a £1m hypercar has no relevance at all.
No, what you need is a supercar in the 458 / MP4 sector that makes a profit at £180K and a serious profit once customers add all the carbonfibre goodies on the option list. A product in this category is where most people aspire to buy. It's notable that Ferrari and McLaren haven't felt the need to put all the hybrid weight and nonsense on cars in this market, they are about style, noise and driving. Once you are in this market you can start to fill in the gaps from £100 to £150K with new niche products in the next round of model developments.
Can you see where I am going here? The CX-75 looks as good as a 458 and better than an MP4. It's the right size and the interior looks perfect. Jaguar already have a fine supercharged V8 that is good for up to 700bhp. They just need the "Saturday Morning Club" to pull the Ever Readys and the silly little engine out of one of the prototypes and drop in the 5 litre with a DSG.
Job done, halo product created, new price point established, trickle down, aspirational product for all males from puberty onwards, loss of fuddy duddy image, new car for James Bond to drive and it's a lot less money than going racing.
Please can someone find a flaw in my thinking? I can't bear the idea that Jaguar won't do it.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-video/video-jaguar-c-...
Somebody at New Jaguar grew a pair and stuck their hand up to point out that "hypercar" customers won't buy a four cylinder engine. Hurrah! Sense at last, just a shame that same person wasn't there when they pulled the V12 out of the XJ220 and replaced it with a Metro engine.
Tata is doing a fine job of growing Jaguar and Land Rover and pushing them upmarket to a better profit position by developing products customers really want. In fact prices are pushing towards the £100K mark for both brands and will soon go over the magic ton with future performance models. In this framework a £1m hypercar has no relevance at all.
No, what you need is a supercar in the 458 / MP4 sector that makes a profit at £180K and a serious profit once customers add all the carbonfibre goodies on the option list. A product in this category is where most people aspire to buy. It's notable that Ferrari and McLaren haven't felt the need to put all the hybrid weight and nonsense on cars in this market, they are about style, noise and driving. Once you are in this market you can start to fill in the gaps from £100 to £150K with new niche products in the next round of model developments.
Can you see where I am going here? The CX-75 looks as good as a 458 and better than an MP4. It's the right size and the interior looks perfect. Jaguar already have a fine supercharged V8 that is good for up to 700bhp. They just need the "Saturday Morning Club" to pull the Ever Readys and the silly little engine out of one of the prototypes and drop in the 5 litre with a DSG.
Job done, halo product created, new price point established, trickle down, aspirational product for all males from puberty onwards, loss of fuddy duddy image, new car for James Bond to drive and it's a lot less money than going racing.
Please can someone find a flaw in my thinking? I can't bear the idea that Jaguar won't do it.
Triple7 said:
The CX-75 is a stunning looking car. Agree, new V12 from the forthcoming XK replacement or the trusty V8.
Gets my vote too!Passed a new F-Type the other day. It didn't even get a second look from passers-by. Now a CX-75 on the other hand .... should get the same sort of reaction the E-Type received in 1961.
I think this is a good option, but to make it for that price, they would have to scale up production considerably and enter a very competitive market with a much simpler car. The business case would be tough to prove as the capital costs will be big.
I personally think they should go ahead and build the car 'as is' and sell it slowly over a long-ish period, as VW did with the Veyron (and indeed, McLaren did with the F1). It's unlikely to make (or lose) a lot of money on that basis, and the marketing benefits are huge. Seeing the pre-production version will whet a lot of appetites and I expect Jaguar have a lot of people pressing them to put the car into production now. Wise move to put it on ice indefinitely - and then see how the market responds.
I personally think they should go ahead and build the car 'as is' and sell it slowly over a long-ish period, as VW did with the Veyron (and indeed, McLaren did with the F1). It's unlikely to make (or lose) a lot of money on that basis, and the marketing benefits are huge. Seeing the pre-production version will whet a lot of appetites and I expect Jaguar have a lot of people pressing them to put the car into production now. Wise move to put it on ice indefinitely - and then see how the market responds.
They have spent a bundle already to get to the stage of five working prototypes. The exterior and interior look almost production ready and totally suited to the £180K market place. Seems the chassis is sorted as well.
Taking out the four cylinder engine, electric motors, batteries, huge cooling system these all require and the electronics will save sufficient weight for there to be less reliance on carbon fibre to keep the overall weight to 1500kg. So, reduce the amount of exotic materials and the cost that goes with them. Hang the V8 and the gearbox from an aluminium sub frame, already a "brand" material. Seems to me the main item Jaguar don't already have on the shelf is the transmission. We are talking lowish volumes here, so a good starting point would be to talk to Xtrac in Newbury about the compact 7 speed gearbox they make for the Pagani Huayra.
The two best cars in this sector use either a naturally aspirated V8 which screams like a race car or a turbo V8 with huge torque. The CX-75 would have the same power to weight, huge torque and will sound fantastic (see: F Type V8S) so it would be more everyday useable than the Ferrari and just as exciting as the McLaren. It would provide a new alternative that, like the McLaren, doesn't have the night club owner/poseur/city boy image that Porsche and Ferrari just can't shake off. Audi have found the R8 made customers re-think a staid brand and it has proved to be highly profitable, with both an R8 replacement and a junior R8 included in the next model cycle.
In this group, the engineering is fairly straightforward with McLaren having the highest tech item in it's suspension, so I can't see that the Jaguar will look old fashioned in this company, far from it. The Ferrari doen't even have the carbonfibre tub of the McLaren and Jaguar, which certainly hasn't stopped it selling.
Of the new £1M hypercars, the only one that matches the engineering intensity within with a new look is the P1. The question is, above the £180K level are you buying the best car that can be made, or footing the bill for the manufacturer's cynical PR campaign to show that their cars don't damage the environment? There's been more press coverage on the Porsche 918 than the others so far and it is already blindingly obvious that a fine sports car has been ruined by having to haul all the plug in hybrid nonsense around all day.
Nonsense? Don't get me wrong, a plug in hybrid makes good sense for an everyday road car, where millions of them will help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. The nonsense is applying this technology to a collectors car that probably won't cover more than 30,000 mile over the next 25 years because the mileage reduces the re-sale value. The manufacturers will use more energy making the parts than they will ever save in service.
The Bugatti is a W16 and sells to customers world wide who aren't troubled by the environmental issues. The McLaren and Porsche have V8s and the Ferrari a V12. Thankfully someone at Jaguar canned the four cylinder CX-75 long before they had to show up at a gun fight with a knife.
So far I am still persuaded that the four cylinder £1m CX-75 would not have sold or enhanced the company's image. Canning it remains the correct decision.
Re-imagining it as a desireable £180K 650bhp V8 supercar with a 7 speed paddle shift gearbox is still a "no brainer" for me. Keep trying to prove me wrong!
Taking out the four cylinder engine, electric motors, batteries, huge cooling system these all require and the electronics will save sufficient weight for there to be less reliance on carbon fibre to keep the overall weight to 1500kg. So, reduce the amount of exotic materials and the cost that goes with them. Hang the V8 and the gearbox from an aluminium sub frame, already a "brand" material. Seems to me the main item Jaguar don't already have on the shelf is the transmission. We are talking lowish volumes here, so a good starting point would be to talk to Xtrac in Newbury about the compact 7 speed gearbox they make for the Pagani Huayra.
The two best cars in this sector use either a naturally aspirated V8 which screams like a race car or a turbo V8 with huge torque. The CX-75 would have the same power to weight, huge torque and will sound fantastic (see: F Type V8S) so it would be more everyday useable than the Ferrari and just as exciting as the McLaren. It would provide a new alternative that, like the McLaren, doesn't have the night club owner/poseur/city boy image that Porsche and Ferrari just can't shake off. Audi have found the R8 made customers re-think a staid brand and it has proved to be highly profitable, with both an R8 replacement and a junior R8 included in the next model cycle.
In this group, the engineering is fairly straightforward with McLaren having the highest tech item in it's suspension, so I can't see that the Jaguar will look old fashioned in this company, far from it. The Ferrari doen't even have the carbonfibre tub of the McLaren and Jaguar, which certainly hasn't stopped it selling.
Of the new £1M hypercars, the only one that matches the engineering intensity within with a new look is the P1. The question is, above the £180K level are you buying the best car that can be made, or footing the bill for the manufacturer's cynical PR campaign to show that their cars don't damage the environment? There's been more press coverage on the Porsche 918 than the others so far and it is already blindingly obvious that a fine sports car has been ruined by having to haul all the plug in hybrid nonsense around all day.
Nonsense? Don't get me wrong, a plug in hybrid makes good sense for an everyday road car, where millions of them will help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. The nonsense is applying this technology to a collectors car that probably won't cover more than 30,000 mile over the next 25 years because the mileage reduces the re-sale value. The manufacturers will use more energy making the parts than they will ever save in service.
The Bugatti is a W16 and sells to customers world wide who aren't troubled by the environmental issues. The McLaren and Porsche have V8s and the Ferrari a V12. Thankfully someone at Jaguar canned the four cylinder CX-75 long before they had to show up at a gun fight with a knife.
So far I am still persuaded that the four cylinder £1m CX-75 would not have sold or enhanced the company's image. Canning it remains the correct decision.
Re-imagining it as a desireable £180K 650bhp V8 supercar with a 7 speed paddle shift gearbox is still a "no brainer" for me. Keep trying to prove me wrong!
The problem Jaguar have is that they remember what happened with the XJ220.
It started off as a very good looking concept car shown at the NEC in 1988. Lots of people wanted it, and wrote deposit cheques.
Jaguar had TWR / JaguarSport engineer and make the production version. They a very good looking car that also happened to be the fastest production car in the world, the trouble was that they made it 2WD and not 4WD per the concept, the power came from a 542 bhp 3.5 turbo V6 and not the V12, and even though the car performed probably far better than the V12 would ever have, in the end the car lost money and there were protracted legal wranglings with people who had committed to buying the car.
Fast forward to today. The CX-75 is undeniably pretty and has world beating performance. But it takes a lot of resource to go from making 5 concept cars to making production ready vehicles.
In my opinion the best way forward is to rework two of the concept cars:-
1 - a V8 supercharged version of the 1.6 turbo keeping the electric motors in place.
2 - a V8 supercharged version of the car with electric front drive and hybrid transaxle rear drive.
If Jaguar do as good a job promoting these as they have the CX-75 then they have something they can keep very close to the new version of the concept and people will know what they're getting before they put down the deposit.
It started off as a very good looking concept car shown at the NEC in 1988. Lots of people wanted it, and wrote deposit cheques.
Jaguar had TWR / JaguarSport engineer and make the production version. They a very good looking car that also happened to be the fastest production car in the world, the trouble was that they made it 2WD and not 4WD per the concept, the power came from a 542 bhp 3.5 turbo V6 and not the V12, and even though the car performed probably far better than the V12 would ever have, in the end the car lost money and there were protracted legal wranglings with people who had committed to buying the car.
Fast forward to today. The CX-75 is undeniably pretty and has world beating performance. But it takes a lot of resource to go from making 5 concept cars to making production ready vehicles.
In my opinion the best way forward is to rework two of the concept cars:-
1 - a V8 supercharged version of the 1.6 turbo keeping the electric motors in place.
2 - a V8 supercharged version of the car with electric front drive and hybrid transaxle rear drive.
If Jaguar do as good a job promoting these as they have the CX-75 then they have something they can keep very close to the new version of the concept and people will know what they're getting before they put down the deposit.
I want the CX-75 as it is, but £700k is bonkers!
I say throw out the heavy electric gear & rework with some awesome turbo'd engines to compete with the MP4-12C.
With the new Honda/Acura NSX due soon, it would have serious comoetition. It needs to fit in between £130-160k bracket, but blow everything in that bracket away.
I say throw out the heavy electric gear & rework with some awesome turbo'd engines to compete with the MP4-12C.
With the new Honda/Acura NSX due soon, it would have serious comoetition. It needs to fit in between £130-160k bracket, but blow everything in that bracket away.
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