Here's Why Jaguar Made Its New Electric Car Feel Like a Vintage V12

• Jaguar has a storied history of building V12-powered cars.
• But Jaguar's future is all about EVs.
• We sample the company's past and future products and find a lot of similarities between what's old and what's to come.

Jaguar is a storied brand that's been going through a major transformation. But even amid massive change, a historic marque does not simply dispose of its past. It must lead former, current and potential customers on a journey, showing how its vision for its future is grounded in — and reflective of — its heritage. That's what brings me to the UK: to drive storied examples of Jaguar's past before sampling a prototype of what's to come. 

Where Jag's been, and where it's going

Jaguar was founded in 1935 and was best known in the following nine decades for producing innovative sports cars, coupes and sedans. In recent years, Jaguar chased volume, attempting to go head-to-head against BMW and Audi, with a full line of cars and SUVs. Ultimately, that wasn't a successful strategy and wasn't true to its essence as a challenger and outlier brand. Jaguar is now pivoting away from the mainstream by moving further upmarket, diminishing volume, and building avant-garde six-figure EVs.

"We created some fantastic cars in recent years, but Jaguar as a company was not the success that we wanted it to be. And it wasn't in the position in the market that we want it to," says Dave Doody, the brand's chief program engineer. "When I was a kid, what inspired me to become an automotive engineer is, I remember thinking that Jaguar was second only to a Rolls-Royce. That's where it sat in the marketplace. And that's what we wanted to re-create with this rebrand and the new product line that we've got coming."

Jag has already demonstrated the direction in which it plans to move: revamping its visual identity with new iconography; revealing a blunt-nosed, long-hooded two-door fastback GT, the Type 00 concept; and unveiling a camouflaged version of its first production car, an aesthetically similar four-door grand tourer code-named X900.

A big EV is coming soon

The X900 is currently in its final stages of development before its reveal this fall. The exterior and interior design, as well as the powertrain and suspension hardware, are generally locked in. Fine-tuning of vehicle dynamics — including suspension, handling and power delivery — is still being finalized. To nail the proper Jaguar style and feel, designers and engineers looked in part to the brand's past. This includes its heritage collection, which consists of stellar examples of notable classic Jags.   

"The X900 project has shown connection to the cars of yesteryear," says David Foster, head of engineering for Jaguar Land Rover Classics, a subsidiary dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of the brand’s vintage vehicles. "They've taken elements of each of those cars to really understand the attributes that are important to Jaguar."

During a recent visit to Jaguar's headquarters, I had the opportunity to drive a quartet of vehicles that the team developing X900 had benchmarked, as a means of instilling into it an essential "Jaguar-ness." I also had a go in the X900 prototype.

First in my set was a very early 1961 "Flat Floor" E-Type Roadster, with a 3.8-liter inline-six engine, non-power-assisted steering and a grinding four-speed non-synchromeshed manual — a vehicle so alluring, Enzo Ferrari anointed it as the world's most beautiful car. But while that E-Type was delicate and spirited, and a genuine brand icon, in considering Jag's forthcoming four-door GT, I was more taken with the inspiration derived from a trio of distinct vehicles.

The second car I drove was another E-Type, one of the last to roll off the assembly line in 1974, a black roadster with a V12 engine and four-speed synchromeshed manual. The third was one of the first XJ sedans equipped with Jag's then-new V12 engine, a fern gray 1973 four-door with a buttery three-speed automatic. And, finally, an early red iteration of the two-door XJ-C pillarless hardtop coupe, from 1978, featuring the same V12 and three-speed auto powertrain.

All three had light yet direct power steering, a softened impact-absorbing suspension, and a bit of a lean in their body control that maintained a direct feel for the road and provided a sense of the car's ability to load up under power. These features were definitely imbued into the new prototype. But what was most surprising and compelling about them was the way their 12-cylinder motor influenced their character.

The V12 engine was first adapted for automotive use by pinnacle American luxury automaker Packard in its famed "Twin Six" vehicles of 1915. These motors were developed, in an era of primitive manual transmissions, for smooth, silent, potent power delivery at any speed regardless of which gear you had wrenched your car into. As Packard chief engineer Jesse Vincent said, this was to "make power invisible."

When Jaguar began producing V12s in the 1970s, it was the only luxury automaker to do so. Unlike exotic high-revving V12s from Ferrari or Lamborghini, Jag's were tuned for this kind of effortless thrust, where the engine never barked or needed to be wound out to achieve its means, where there always felt to be power in reserve.

An EV that drives ... like a V12

What struck me during my drives of these three vehicles was the way in which the power delivery of the V12 resembles that of an electric vehicle, particularly a luxury one. They're both torquey from the onset. They're relaxed and smooth. They're improbably refined. They're quiet. So I wondered if Jaguar had benchmarked the 12-cylinder in its approach to the new EV. Turns out, I was accurate — with some caveats.

Some contemporary EVs are tuned to deliver their full power instantaneously, maximizing acceleration off the line. Jaguar wanted to maintain the effortlessness, without the "immediate, almost breathtaking, punch in the back," according to Doody.

In other words, Jaguar wanted to tune the EV experience to deliver continuous gradations of performance throughout the accelerative range, varying the car's capabilities to provide a more linear and stepped feel to the power delivery — akin to that of a big laconic V12.

The X900's big battery pack, coupled to one front and two rear motors, is not meant to just get you underway as quickly as possible, and then run out of steam, according to Doody. It's meant to deliver 1,000-plus horsepower in a way that inspires confidence at nearly any rational speed. In a way that makes you feel there’s always more available in reserve. To push you toward exuberance.

"So, if you put your foot down, you get what you asked for. If you want even more, you get even more. And then there's more beyond that," Doody says. "You may or may not need it, but that's how we've approached it because that's what the feeling of driving the classic cars are with the V12."