Concept Cars

[dikkehemaworst]

While Jaguar was developing the XJ6, a French joint venture of Peugeot and Renault had their own luxury car in mind, codenamed Project H. The car was supposed to carry a Renault badge and be built by the rhombus-badged automaker, but the drivetrain was largely Peugeot's field.

Specs? 490 cm long, 188 cm wide, oleopneumatic suspension, rear wheel drive and a 3.5 V8 engine. Plus dual-zone air conditioning.

And the reason for failure? Well, to justify the project the joint venture would have needed about 150 units sold per day - over three times the sales volume of the Series 1 Jaguar XJ, and a bit more than what Mercedes was selling in W108/W109 S-Classes. Given Renault's relative lack of prestige or US strength, Project H was shelved in 1967, before any steps to put it into production were taken.

Not all was lost, though - in 1971 Volvo partnered with Peugeot and Renault to redesign the 3.5 V8 into the 2.7 PRV V6 that saw frequent use in all three partners' cars.
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[dikkehemaworst]

JAGUAR XJ40 ESTATE

Until 1992 Jaguar had never made a mass-produced Estate car.
There had been a few specialist coachbuilders offering Jaguar estate cars, including Ladbrooke Avon's estate version of the XJ6 Series-3, and Lynx Eventer's estate based on an XJS; but never one by Jaguar themselves.

By the late 1980's Jaguar were beginning to look into the idea of developing an estate car based on the new XJ40. This became an official project undertaken by the Design and Engineering Centre at Whitley, and resulted in this prototype which was given serious consideration for production.
However it was felt that the economic climate of the early 90's cast too many clouds over the project's viability, and further developement was abandoned.
Here are some images of the prototype - now at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon.

[ratchart]

Not bad actually, a lot more coherent than any of the XJ6 conversions I've seen.

[braaap]

Nov 18, 2024 7:49:07 GMT dikkehemaworst said:

Especially in this picture it looks a lot like a stretched photo of a 3 series touring.

[jayj83]

that does look a spit of the E30, Gaydon is a great place to visit though