Surpassing even Jaguar’s own expectations, the the F-Type Convertible based special has proved to be a huge success, and the British car manufacturer might just come up with a replacement.
Using the supercharged 567 HP supercharged V8 that’s now available in the F-Type SVR and a 100% aluminum body, the Project 7 can accelerate from 0 to 100 Km/h (0-62 mph) in 3.8 seconds, reaching a top speed of 299 Km/h (186 mph) in the process.
Only 250 units were made and all of them sold out like hotcakes; in fact, their limited edition status made them even more valuable on the “second-hand” market, with prices significantly higher than the $191,727 original price tag .
Now, according to a report from Auto Express, company officials have started discussing a possible successor, with design boss Ian Callum considering custom-bodied cars in the future:
“We’ve thought about it. We’ve started asking, ‘What do we do after Project 7?’, because I’d like to take it a step further. And that means making it more of an individual car than an F-Type.
“But the business case is hugely difficult. What can you charge for it? What do you charge for a Jaguar? How far can it go? With a supercar like the C-X75, you could probably go to £1million, but with a limited number of, say, 200 cars. And even that, as a business case, was pushing it. So if you’re going to get into the realms of something that’s a modified F-Type, it’s very difficult.”
John Edwards, Head of Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations, elaborated: “We said we’d build 250 examples of Project 7, and within the business there was quite a lot of nervousness about that. We kind of plucked that number out of thin air, really. I personally had to guarantee we’d sell 250; as it turned out, we could have sold 500.”
Even so, he indicated that SVO would focus its expertise and energy on production cars, not bespoke variants: “Custom bodies are not our plan; we want to push the cosmetics of the car to the limit, not re-engineer the car as some others have done.”
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