Jaguar C-X17 Concept

Jaguar, thanks to its partnership with Land Rover, has long resisted the siren call to develop an SUV or crossover, concentrating instead on sedans, coupes, and sports cars and leaving more truck-like products to its sibling company. But evidently the popularity of these utilities is something that Jaguar could no longer ignore; at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the company took the wraps off what a crossover cat might look like.

The C-X17 has the face, sleek lines, and fender vents that you’d associate with the XF or XJ sedan, but in a taller, two-box shape more closely aligned with an SUV. The big difference from other luxury crossovers, however, is Jaguar’s commitment to using aluminum structures for less mass and greater efficiency and performance.

Underpinning this concept is an architecture that will first see the light of day in a new compact Jaguar sedan, first in Europe and then in the United States a year later. The C-X17 would have a unibody construction that incorporates the frame elements into the sheet metal itself.

At 185.7 inches long, the C-X17 would slot into the midsize-SUV market against such competitors as the BMW X3 and Mercedes-Benz GLK. Power would come from a longitudinally mounted V-6 engine with a choice of rear- or all-wheel drive. While Jaguar hasn’t formally committed to building the C-X17, the flexibility of the aluminum unibody design for the next-generation compact sedans demonstrates that the company has the capability to quickly enter the fast-growing crossover market.

Courtesy: report dot com

New Jaguar C-X17 SUV

Jaguar's upcoming SUV to feature the same aluminium architecture as the new XE sedan.

Jaguar has started work on the engineering process of its upcoming SUV which is due in international markets by 2016. The C-X17 SUV has the same basic aluminium architecture as Jaguar’s new XE sedan.

Thanks to the natively rear-drive chassis, the Jaguar C-X17 SUV is destined to challenge the Porsche Macan head on as a crossover with true sports car on-road dynamics, while sister brand Land Rover concentrates on luxury and ‘adventure’ off-roaders with the Range Rover and Discovery families.

The test-mules seen carry a heavily chopped-about body of the Land Rover Freelander replacement SUV, but the final product is expected to be a much larger SUV which will have wider tracks, longer wheelbase and extended rear overhang. The production version of Jaguar’s SUV will be sized close to the 4.7m length of the concept that was first shown last year.

Dubbed internally as a ‘sports crossover’, the C-X17 will be the second model in the biggest new-model offensive in Jaguar’s history. It’s a product programme that has to boost Jaguar’s annual sales well into six figures and - in the medium term - well beyond 200,000 units annually.

Although the concept version of the C-X17 was rather lower than this production model (which was the same height as the extremely compact Evoque), the real car is clearly quite sizeable.

The production version of the Jaguar SUV is expected to be  powered by Jaguar Land Rover’s range of home-grown Ingenium four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines, a range that promises to be flexible enough to offer lower emissions and a top speed as high as 300kph in petrol form when hooked up to twin turbochargers.

It’s not yet known whether the Jaguar C-X17 will be offered in pure rear-wheel drive form, but that’s a distinct possibility for the lower-powered models for some markets, not least because it would benefit fuel economy.

Compared with the Porsche Macan - 
which is based on the Audi Q5 architecture but fitted with the longitudinal Porsche PDK transmission - the C-X17 looks set to be more spacious. It’s expected to be longer and has much less of a coupé profile than the Macan.

The C-X17 will benefit from a better weight distribution than the Macan, with the engine sitting further back in the nose. The Jaguar should also undercut the Macan’s unladen weight of 1865kg, thanks to its all-aluminium structure.

Courtesy: AutoCarIndia dot com