Here’s a Jaguar XKR, seen at the Tuning Tribe dealer area in western Beijing in January 2016. It was cold and dusty, but the spectacular British sports car didn’t seem to care. The XKR looked fantastic in British Racing Green, fitted with the original five-spoke alloy wheels. A Jaguar XKR is an extremely rare car in China, so I took a good look.
The Jaguar XKR
The Jaguar XKR was the supercharged variant of the Jaguar XK8, which launched in 1996 as the successor to the legendary Jaguar XJS. It had a rounded, aerodynamic design with long front and rear overhangs. The side windows were narrow, the beltline was high, and the fenders were so wide that the wheels almost looked too small for the car. This particular car appears to be a 2001–2002 Jaguar XKR.
Supercharged!
This is the original Jaguar “Supercharged” Growler badge — probably the best automotive badge in the world. The 2001–2002 Jaguar XKR had a supercharged 4.0-liter V8 under the hood, producing an impressive 290 hp and 393 Nm. Jaguar paired the engine with a five-speed automatic transmission, sending all that power to the rear wheels. The company claimed a top speed of 251 km/h and a 0–100 km/h time of 6.7 seconds. The Eaton supercharger came from Ford, which owned Jaguar at the time and also used Eaton superchargers on models such as the F-150 SVT Lightning.
BBS wheels
These are optional 20-inch BBS “Detroit” alloy wheels for the Jaguar XKR, with a two-piece construction and exposed bolts around the outer rim. It is a great-looking wheel: sporty yet classy, finished in a perfect light gray. Jaguar offered several optional BBS wheel designs for the XKR. Behind the wheels are perforated brake discs and Jaguar-branded brake calipers.
The interior
This is what Jaguar does best! A typically British cabin with shiploads of soft Ivory leather and glossy burr walnut veneer. The instrument panel features three large round binnacles and a small clock. The small screen below the central air vents is part of the optional factory satellite-navigation system. On cars without navigation, this space was occupied by three auxiliary gauges. The Jaguar XKR was a 2+2, with two small seats in the back, which are really just big enough for kids.
Late 1990s and early 2000s luxury cars came with these beautiful panels full of tiny buttons and switches. The audio system has a cassette deck and a six-disc CD changer in the trunk, but no separate CD slot in the cabin. The rectangular panel immediately behind the gear selector is the ashtray. The S button below the gear lever activates the automatic transmission’s Sport mode, holding the gears longer for a more aggressive shift pattern.
Pollution in 2016
In the winter of 2016, Beijing experienced one of its worst periods of air pollution. On some days, you could barely see more than a few hundred meters, and the air was thick with smog. Dust and other pollutants settled on every surface, including the city’s millions of cars. It was hard to find a car that didn’t look like this. Cleaning made little sense, as it would be dirty again in no time. Shops and schools sometimes closed, and people didn’t venture outside unless they really had to. That’s why there’s nobody around in these photos.
The Jaguar XKR in China
The first-generation Jaguar XKR was never officially sold in China, making this an exceptionally rare car. This particular XKR was most likely brought into the country as a private or grey-market import. Jaguar officially entered the Chinese market in 2004, near the end of the first-generation XK’s production run. The second-generation XK officially arrived in China in 2006, followed by the XKR in 2009.
Keeping a car like this on the road wasn’t easy. There were no dealers and no local supply of spare parts. Only from the mid-2000s did specialist shops begin to appear that could maintain oddball rarities like this. These shops usually sourced parts directly from overseas, using eBay and other websites. That was great for the emerging classic-car community, but even a simple repair could take months while the shop waited for parts to arrive. Imagine breaking that pretty oval-shaped indicator!
Today, it seems unlikely that this Jaguar XKR is still on the road in Beijing. The city’s ever-stricter emissions regulations have made life increasingly difficult for old-school V8-powered sports cars. Hopefully, it now sits safely in a private collection. Or perhaps it is still racking up miles in a smaller city, where the rules aren’t quite so strict.
