Jaguar's new baby... with teeth

Tomorrow is Press Day at the Geneva Motor Show and, as every year, I will be there. First stop of the day will probably be the Jaguar stand to get a closer look at the XKR-S, the most powerful and fastest series production sports car the firm has ever built. The super-coupé will hit 60mph from a standing start in 4.2 seconds. That’s 0.4 quicker than any current XKR and it will rocket on to a top speed of 186mph – 12mph more than the XKR with the Speed Pack. Power comes from the same supercharged 5.0-litre V8 engine that’s under the bonnet of every XKR, but it’s been uprated from 510 to 550bhp. Bespoke suspension changes have also been made to both the front and rear, for improved performance and to boost driver appeal. The XKR’s Adaptive Dynamics system has also been reprogrammed to allow more enthusiastic drivers to explore the edges of the handling envelope. Also from Jaguar but not on its stand is something called the B99, which is a concept by Italian styling house Bertone. It’s previewing some ideas for a new entry level saloon to replace the X-Type, which was finally killed off last year. The work is Bertone’s but it’s been done with the full permission of Jaguar, and the story goes that Bertone’s stylists even got a briefing from Jag’s design boss Ian Callum before they sharpened their pencils. Some said Jaguar would never again attempt a BMW 3-Series rival after the X-Type’s failure – it was a reskinned Ford Mondeo with a few tweaks – but looks like that’s not the case.

Smart ForSpeed: lovely, but why?

Smart’s journey from an idea by the boss of watch firm Swatch – and to be a brand sold under the umbrella of the VW Group – has not been easy. Eventually launched as a sibling to Mercedes, financial problems led to the early demise of the Roadster and ForFour models. You may also remember the CrossBlade, 2002’s short-lived version of the ForTwo with no roof or doors, ideal for Florida and that’s about it. Yet Smart is persisting with the idea and is to reveal the ForSpeed concept at next week’s Geneva Motor Show. This time it features an electric powertrain, and a fully charged battery is sufficient for 84 miles of driving. A ‘quick-charge’ system will take the power cell from zero to 80 per cent capacity in 45 minutes. Revisiting something unsuccessful like the CrossBlade is a strange choice to simply demonstrate a new EV propulsion system. Comparisons with the Crossblade are inevitable because of the way the ForSpeed looks. I can only conclude it plans to build a production version. I’ll learn more next week.

Labour of love

Spent much of Friday in a very rural corner of Oxfordshire in what used to a watermill and associated buildings. Today it’s the rather ramshackle home to the kind of automotive project that only the British can do properly – vintage restoration. The chaps at Fiennes will take the rusty wreck of a pre-WW2 Rolls-Royce or Bentley and turn it back into a thing of beauty. Needless to say, this is not a job that can be rushed. I don’t like putting my car into the garage and not getting it back the same day. At Fiennes it’s not even a case of you heading off on holiday and picking it up when you get back. People have emigrated for shorter times than it takes their skilled engineers! Two years is the average time for a full restoration, though company owner Will Fiennes told me last summer they finished a car that the customer dropped off 12 years ago!! Think he’d had some financial problems part way through, which is why it had taken so long. Testament to the quality of Fiennes’ work, the car had gone straight to a Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts’ Club event at Rockingham Castle in Northants and won its class.

How did I get around before the iPhone?

It’s amazing how quickly the Apple iPhone and its associated apps have become part of our motoring fabric. Earlier this week I drove to Colchester railway station using my TomTom app. When I arrived I paid for my parking with my RingGo app (which is brilliant). I checked the train times using an app. When I was in the capital I navigated the streets using my A-Z app and the one for the Tube. Tomorrow morning I will be driving to Oxfordshire to interview some people at a Rolls-Royce restoration company, and will be checking the state of the traffic on my route using the RAC app. Imagine the screen of the iPhone built into the dashboard of your car. Obviously it wouldn’t be a separate screen, but the same one as the sat-nav and infotainment system. It’s only a matter of time before that happens, and with Apple-style downloadable apps part of the software of your vehicle. I predict it will be on a new car within the next two years. I know for a fact that Ford is working on this and its engineers won’t be alone. Get ready for the future.

Pagani Huayra: rarer than you know what...

Was researching the new car from Italian firm Pagani at the back end of last week, for a piece to go in gadget mag T3. Considering this is the company’s second ever car – if you count the various different versions of the Zonda as one – then it appears to be an astonishingly accomplished machine. The newcomer is called the Huayra, which we are told is to be pronounced ‘Why-Ra’ and like the Zonda, is named after an Argentine wind. It has apparently been on the drawing board since 2003 and you can’t argue with it as a stunning piece of automotive design. It’s taken the ‘cab forward’ cues of the Zonda and turned them into a much more mature vehicle. The car is built around a carbon-titanium tub, with the 6.0-litre V12 – bought in from Mercedes’ tuning arm AMG – located behind the seats and visible through a glass screen. Access to the cabin is via gull-wing doors, revealing a brushed aluminium and leather interior that’s as much about art as functional design. I’d like to think I will have one of these on my drive, but in reality that’s never going to happen. My working life is more at the mainsteam end of motoring, and this is a world away from that. Maybe only 100 of these will be built – probably spread over the next decade or so – and the cost is expected to be £1milllion. The chances of me ever seeing one on the road are like winning the lottery. I’ve only seen a Zonda once, and that was because I knew the owner.

Nissan's 370Z replacement?

Details of what the car companies are going to unveil at next month’s Geneva Motor Show are now coming in thick and fast, but this one caught my eye. With the launch of the Leaf going on, Nissan is maximising the PR opportunity by giving a debut to this stylish machine. It’s called the ESFLOW electric sports car concept and uses technology from its sibling to show how EVs aren’t going to kill the thrill many people get from driving. The rear-wheel drive two seater features electric motors on the back wheels and can hit 60mph in under five seconds. A single charge of the lithium-ion batteries gives a 150-mile range. It’s difficult to tell exactly how it looks from this image, but the long bonnet, high waistline and steep wraparound windscreen are classic features for this type of car. Thankfully there’s no shot of interior; I’m not totally convinced that gold leather and perforated gold suede seats, with doors trimmed in dark blue leather and suede, is going to be easy on the eye. I’ll wait until Press Day on 1 March to find out. The obvious conclusion is that the ESFLOW might be some sort of replacement for the 370Z. That’s certainly a question to be asked of Nissan’s top brass.

Qatar: the future of the car industry?

Lots in the press last week about the Volkswagen XL1, a concept car that’s in many ways the spiritual successor to Honda’s original Insight of the late Nineties. The covered rear wheels and coupé-style body are the obvious link between the two, as is the pioneering approach to taking motoring forward not in small steps but in giant leaps. Any vehicle which can manage 313mpg has got to be a good thing, but the most interesting thing about the XL1 is where it was unveiled. I’ve never been to the Qatar Motor Show but I suspect it won’t be long before I’m heading to this tiny state in the Middle East. Just as it’s transformed itself from a British protectorate known only for pearl-fishing into a massively wealthy gas and oil-rich Arab Emirate, so another change is on the way. Most industry commentators expect Qatar to become an increasingly important player in the global automotive scene. The state is already a significant shareholder in VW – no doubt part of the reason why the XL1 debuted at the local motor show – and the German firm has announced plans for new a R&D centre within the Qatar Science Park. Just as these tiny countries are using their vast cash reserves to buy in global motorsport – Formula One, MotoGP, etc – so they are doing the same with the car industry and the associated circus that comes with it. Sadly, it means we will never see another British Motor Show. Why? Because the car makers won’t support it when places like Qatar are so much more glamorous and make it so cheap and easy for them.

McLaren readies 'Job One' for first customer

I really like this picture. There’s something peculiarly British about two blokes hand-finishing the bodyshell of a high-performance sports car before it goes off to the paintshop. I’ve even had a go at this very job, not at the McLaren factory where this picture was taken, but almost a decade ago at Longbridge when MG Rover was still around. I wasn’t let loose on a real car, but on a sample panel. It’s not just a question of rubbing the buffer over the surface for five minutes; this is a precision job that takes experience to get right. Polish too much and you leave what’s underneath too thin to take the paint. I came away with new-found admiration for what I presumed was unskilled labour. The vehicle in this picture is the first McLaren MP4-12C production car taking shape in race firm’s base in Woking. It’s been released to show the world that Britain’s newest supercar is on the way. The plan is to build up to 1,000 more like before Christmas, and they will be sold through a network of 35 retailers in 19 countries.