A new 'baby Jaguar' concept will be revealed by Bertone at the Geneva show next month, sparking speculation that its styling heralds the shape of a new BMW 3 Series rival that's known to be under development.
Various stories around the internet have implied the Bertone B99 has been worked up in league with Jaguar's design team, but while these official preview images reveal an attractive shape that's definitely redolent of Jags of old, we can't help thinking it's rather too 'classic' to reflect the reality of things to come.
In fact, the B99 looks to us more like a natural progression from Jaguar's 2001 design concept the R-Coupe, which was the first concept to spring from the drawing boards of the Jaguar advanced design team headed by Julian Thomson under new (then) design director Ian Callum. Although we - and everyone else - loved the R Coupe, the actual direction of Jaguar's travel has been somewhat different, as exemplified by the XF and XJ.
We know that Bertone discussed the B99 with Jaguar at the project's inception, but we suspect that any official contact between the two companies was based on a genuine interest at Jaguar in what a third party might come up with. Our sources tell us that Jaguar's designers haven't seen the finished B99, and are looking forward to its introduction at Geneva just like us!
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And Jaguar's own R-Coupe from 2001...
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