Jaguar F-Type Club Sport planned

Senior managers have tantalized Jaguar fans with the possibility of a road-legal lightweight version of the Jaguar F-Type Coupe. With up to 200kg discarded from the 1665kg F-Type R Coupe, a Club Sport version of Jaguar’s newest sports car should sprint from 0-62mph in less than 3.5 seconds, launching it towards supercar territory, sources hinted.

It would tip the scales at around 1465kg or less, with more aggressive aerodynamics and a far more austere interior, racing-style carbon-fibre seats and lightweight carbon-fibre panels.

Hinting that the investigation into the Club Sport F-Type Coupe is further advanced than Jaguar would like to admit, F-Type Programme Director Russ Varney said it would need volumes of around 500 cars a year to be a viable proposition.

“We have three or four things we are looking at for the next developments of the F-Type and a lightweight, harder version is a long way up that list,” F-Type Programme Director Russ Varney admitted.

Jaguar has made famous lightweight versions of some of its most famous historical production vehicles from its glory days, including the C-Type and the E-Type, and it’s a sign of the marque’s burgeoning confidence that it’s considering doing it again.

“If you could get a couple of hundred kilos out of it, that would be a special car. We won’t get any weight savings of significance by looking at any one thing, so it has to be holistic across every part and that’s a lot of engineering,” Varney cautioned.

While the 5.0-litre supercharged V8 engine seems a natural fit for a Club Sport F-Type, with its 542bhp of power at 6500rpm and a crunching 680Nm of torque from just 2500rpm, it hasn’t been locked in.

“You get down to a critical mass of weight savings once we go so far and then we can start downsizing brakes and engines and things. As a powertrain, the V8 is superb but the V6 has its advantages for that style of car, too,” Mr Varney hinted.

See also: Jaguar considers four-cylinder F-Type.