Amid tightening emissions laws and a shift to electrification, Jaguar-Land Rover’s old-school supercharged V8 will continue for the foreseeable future.
Jaguar Land Rover’s long-serving 5.0-litre supercharged V8 won’t be discontinued any time soon, according to a senior executive for the company.
Stuart Frith, vehicle program director for Jaguar Land Rover – and currently the chief engineer for the Defender and Discovery – told Drive the engine known internally as AJ133 won’t be discontinued any time soon. However, he declined to say how long it will last.
“Broadly, the AJ133 engine is certainly technologically advanced enough to keep us going for quite some time,” Mr Frith told Drive at a recent media launch.
Currently, the engine is used in the Land Rover Defender 90 and 110 V8 models, where it has an output of 386kW and 625Nm. The same engine is also used in certain Jaguar F-Pace and F-Type models where it produces up to 423kW and 700Nm.
The new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models have recently adopted a 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged V8 (390kW and 700Nm) sourced from BMW. It replaced Jaguar Land Rover’s internally-developed 5.0-litre V8.
The move to BMW power for some models was intended to future-proof the V8 against tightening emissions laws in Europe.
Mr Frith told Drive the upcoming Euro 7 emissions laws are “quite a talking point” in the industry, before being enforced in the European Union in 2025.
“There is a lot of discussion with other (car manufacturers) around that, making plans to be compliant with that. It’s earlier than we anticipated in Europe,” said Mr Frith.
The rollout of strict Euro 7 emissions laws is yet to be locked in, amid calls by some sections of the auto industry to delay the introduction as the proposed targets are deemed to be next to impossible to meet.
The post Land Rover, Jaguar supercharged V8 to live on – for now appeared first on Drive.