SUBSCRIBE TO THE
MAGAZINE NOW
Facebook-f Instagram
Search
Close this search box.

Jaguar’s new XF to walk the tightrope

22 March, 2015

The Jaguar XF was first released in 2007, and is Jaguar’s biggest-selling and most awarded car. The all-new XF is to be revealed on March 24 and, featuring Jaguar’s aluminium-intensive architecture, is expected to provide class-leading efficiency, weight, and design — Ian Callum, Jaguar’s director of design, has said, “I believe the all-new XF will be the best-looking car in its class.”   

The XF’s lightweight credentials are to be highlighted, and Jaguar have thought of something quite outside the square to achieve this. The aluminium-intensive XF will be driven, in what Jaguar call a high-wire drive, across two 34mm thick wires suspended high above water.

Jaguar has enlisted world-renowned stunt driver Jim Dowdall — whose driving has starred in films including James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Indiana Jones titles — to help pull it off.

A teaser video for the feat can be viewed below.

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

11 September, 2024

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

6 September, 2024

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”