The Jaguar C-X75 is the Jaguar that answered a simple question — how much car can this badge carry? — with 778 hp from 2 diesel micro gas turbines. It was built from 2010 to 2013, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. Ian Callum drew it.
How it came about
The Jaguar C-X75 is a hybrid-electric, 2-seat, concept car produced by British automobile manufacturer Jaguar Cars in partnership with the derivative of the Formula One team, Williams Advanced Engineering, which debuted at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. The powertrain of the C-X75 concept is rated at 778 hp (789 PS; 580 kW) through four YASA electric motors, each of which drives one of the four wheels. The batteries driving these motors are recharged using two diesel-fed micro gas turbines instead of a conventional four-stroke engine. It was described as a design study that would influence future design and technology. In May 2011 Jaguar announced a limited production of the C-X75 from 2013 to 2015, with a compact, forced induction petrol engine combined with electric motors instead of the micro gas turbines in the concept car.
A maximum of 250 cars were planned to be built in partnership with Williams Advanced Engineering. The production version was expected to have an all-electric range of 50 km (31 miles). In December 2012, the company announced the cancellation of production due to the Great Recession. Five developmental prototypes were produced in the production car specifications in 2013. The car was featured in the 2015 film Spectre, the twenty-fourth James Bond film in which seven cars were supplied to the filmmakers.
The hardware
Power comes from 2 diesel micro gas turbines; 778 hp is the published figure; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 1700 kg. Work it out per tonne and you get about 458 horsepower — hypercar territory, where the limiting factor is the tyre, not the engine. It shifts through a Concept: Direct drive / Developmental prototypes: / 7-speed Electrohydraulic manual transmission / automated manual. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 2725 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Jaguar XJ220 (spiritual). Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Lamborghini Aventador, the Ferrari 458, the Aston Martin One-77 — show what else the money bought that year. Its Jaguar stablemates include the F-Type and the Vanden Plas.