The most powerful road-legal Jaguar in the history of the brand, the new XE SV Project 8, is not your usual overpowered four-door saloon.

Jaguar made some serious changes to the chassis of the XE in order to make it not only capable of handling the 591hp (600PS) of the supercharged V8, but also fit an extreme aero agenda that’s necessary for the speeds this car is capable of hitting.

Thus, they didn’t just fit some extra components and called it a day; in fact, they had to rework the entire bodywork in order to make sure the XE SV Project 8 would stay on the ground at over 200 mph (320 km/h). The normal XE was never designed for that kind of speeds in the first place.

Production will be limited to just 300 units, all of them in left-hand drive, because converting the XE SV Project 8 to right-hand drive would mean they had to lift the engine higher and that would compromise the dynamics of the car.

The more details you hear about this beast, the more impressive it gets – and who better to give us a tour than Harry Metcalfe, who also works as JLR’s Executive Advisor of Special Operations and was involved in the project since its inception, on the video linked below.

VIDEO