Jaguar has spent the better part of the last decade iterating and innovating. The new look of Jaguar that’s resulted from all of that innovation, and the cars that it has built by the company, bear all the marks of that restless spirit. The current generation of Jaguar cars — especially the F-TYPE and forthcoming F-PACE — borrow subtle cues from the long and storied history of Jaguar, but they’re balanced against and tempered by a real sense of a company in perpetual forward motion.
Jaguar has made changes in ways that aren’t always visible at first glance. The company’s InControl infotainment system is one example of this; the recent InMotion spinoff would be another. But as they’ve done with car bodies, the company is about to make a change under the hood, bringing the past into the future. A company whose straight-six engines are the stuff of legend is reintroducing inline six-cylinder engines to their lineup.
The Ingenium inline engine — a recent design currently found as a four-cylinder on the 2016 Jaguar XE — is a work of genius on several levels. Its aluminum construction enables it to be smaller and lighter. It meets tougher emissions standards. It’s more economic to build, and to run. And it does all this without sacrificing horsepower or torque.
There’s more. It’s modular, making the engine easy to scale. The current inline four-cylinder arrangement could easily be scaled down for a three-cylinder, or scaled up to six cylinders. The latter change, according to Jaguar, is just over the horizion. Six new six-cylinder engines are just over the horizon: three gas engines tuned in the range of 300-500 horsepower, and three diesels capable of 275-400 horses. Not only will these engines find their way into traditional Jaguar cars and SUVs, they’re engineered such that they can also be part of a hybrid power train.
There’s no definitive timeline for the inline six-cylinder Ingenium engine, though credible sources like Road and Track peg its return to some time in 2017. That doesn’t mean you have to wait a year for Jaguar innovation, however. Come to Jaguar of Peabody today and you can see the results right now in the form of the 2016 F-TYPE Jaguar and the 2016 Jaguar XF.
