With no roof above to protect you from the dust, you’ll certainly need a helmet.
Jaguar is in a festive mood as the British brand is continuing festivities to mark 70 years of sports cars carrying the leaping feline logo. Not one, but two one-offs have been created as an homage to the XK 120 revealed at the end of the 1940s before enjoying racing success early in the next decade. The tribute rally cars were not built from scratch as Jag used as foundation the F-Type Convertible taking inspiration from the Chequered Flag Limited Edition equipped with a turbocharged 2.0-liter gasoline engine developing 296 horsepower.
The modifications these two cars have gone through to morph from road-going production models to rally cars have been carried out in-house by Jaguar Design and Engineering. Interestingly, even though the cars won’t actually take part in rallying, the one-offs have been developed to meet FIA specification and come with beefier brakes, uprated suspension, and a protective roll cage. The two F-Type models has also received hood-mounted auxiliary lights, body-hugging racing seats with six-point harness, and a fire extinguisher in case something goes terribly wrong.
The 20-inch glossy black alloys you see on the standard F-Type Chequered Flag Limited Edition available in coupe and convertible forms have been dropped by Jaguar to make room for a shiny set of motorsport-spec wheels shod in tires developed to tackle gravel. In addition, the engineers also implemented a limited-slip differential to optimize power transfer to the wheels while going over difficult terrain. The F-Type Convertible rally car sits 40 millimeters (1.57 inches) higher than its road-going equivalent to lower the risks of damaging the underbody.
Jaguar mentions the two rally cars have already been thoroughly evaluated at the Walters Arena rally stage in South Wales and will embark upon a tour of various series events in the following months.
Source: Jaguar
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