Jaguar XE SV Project 8 becomes the fastest saloon around the Nurburgring

When Jaguar revealed their SVO developed Project 8 XE at the Good FOS, they had the Nurburgring lap record in mind. Now, it’s official that the production-ready Project 8 has smashed the Nordschleife lap record for four-door cars with a time of 7min 21.23sec.

The British sports car broke the previous record set by Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio by an impressive 11 seconds. It equals the record of the Ferrari 488 GTB around the 12.9-mile German racetrack. Behind the wheel was the Belgian racing driver Vincent Radermecker while the Project 8 was in the Track Mode to achieve the record time. The Project 8 was running on 265/35 R20 and 305/30 R20 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres with optional weight-saving two-seat Track Pack. 

The Track Pack includes front carbon fibre racing seats with four-point harnesses fixed to a harness retention hoop in place of the rear seat. Also part of the package are adjustable suspension, aerodynamics and electronic systems, which can be configured in Track Mode. Under the hood is a 5.0-litre supercharged V8 belting out 591bhp. The compact super saloon is capable of doing a 0-100kmph run in 3.3 seconds with a top whack of 320kmph.

The XE SV Project 8 is the most powerful, agile and track-focused Jaguar till date. Although it’s based on the XE, 75 per cent of the hardware is new. Only 300 examples of the Project 8 will be exclusively hand built at SVO’s Technical Centre in early 2018. The Coventry-based carmaker has quoted a £149,995 (Rs 1.29 crores) for the XE SV Project 8.