2016 Jaguar XE – The baby Jaguar saloon starts production.
The Jaguar XE is an entry-level luxury saloon car from famous marque. The carmaker has finally began the XE’s production at the historic Solihull manufacturing plant in United Kingdom. This plant has been in operations for almost 7 decades and used to produce almost all Land Rover cars, till date. However, the XE saloon marks the first time that a Jaguar product is being made at Solihull. The Tata-owned JLR group pumped in close INR 14,000 crore into this plant to modernise it for the production of future Jaguar models.
The XE is mostly made out of aluminium and employs a brand-new architecture.
The Jaguar XE will come with a swarray of engine options, they include four-pots and six-cylinder units and the four-pots can be had in a diesel guise as well. The 3.0-litre six will be the flagship powerplant and will chuck out almost 340 horses and a meaty 450 Nm of torque. The rest of the lineup will include the latest Ingenium 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol units which will come in different states of tune, offering between 200-240 horses and max torque will be around 340 Nm. The 2.0-litre Ingenium family of oil-burners will serve between 163-180 horses, with maximum torque figures standing at 380 Nm.
Jaguar’s new Ingenium family of engines promise frugality and power.
Globally, the engines will either be mated to a 6-speed manual stick or an 8-speed automatic. We think that Jaguar might give the manual gearbox the skip for India, just roping in the automatic transmission. The baby Jaguar saloon is already hit the showrooms in United Kingdom and will be prowling Indian showrooms early next year. The first batch of XEs are likely to be imported into the country as CBUs, so they will remain expensive compared to some of its rivals. However, JLR would eventually assemble the Jaguar XE at its Pune plant, which currently nails together the Jaguar XF, XJ and a couple of Land Rovers, including the Range Rover Evoque.