Jaguar Land Rover to drop supercharged V8 for turbocharged BMW power

Jaguar Land Rover’s wonderful but aging supercharged V8 is being set out to pasture. Rather than eating the costs and designing a new engine from the ground up, JLR plans to source V8s from BMW.

By Reese Counts
The 4.4 liter Twin Power Turbo V-8 engine with Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) logo, that powers the 2012 BMW 650i Coupe, is pictured in Carmel, California, U.S., on Monday, Aug. 22, 2011. The car has a $83,875 base price and features a direct injection engine that produces 400 horsepower and 450 pound-foot of torque. Photographer: Mark Elias/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The 4.4 liter Twin Power Turbo V-8 engine with Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) logo, that powers the 2012 BMW 650i Coupe, is pictured in Carmel, California, U.S., on Monday, Aug. 22, 2011. The car has a $83,875 base price and features a direct injection engine that produces 400 horsepower and 450 pound-foot of torque. Photographer: Mark Elias/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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There are few things that sound as good as Jaguar’s 5.0 liter supercharged V8. As great as it is when the supercharger whines or the exhaust cracks and pops on throttle lift-off as the air pressure equalizes, the basic design dates back to the ’90s. Plainly, the engine isn’t as efficient as it needs to be, but designing a new V8 from the ground up is an expensive proposition. Instead,
Automobile reports that Jaguar Land Rover is set to use a twin-turbocharged V8s supplied by BMW.


Scalable architecture is all the rage as automakers streamline designs in order to save costs. For example, Jaguar’s current supercharged V6 is quite literally a V8 with two holes missing. They didn’t even change the length of the block. It seems both of those designs are on their way out, with the V6 being replaced by a inline-six closely related to the company’s inline four. It seems that rather than designing an new and expensive V8 for their top of the line models JLR, is sourcing from BMW.


From 1994 to 2000, BMW owned Land Rover. A few models, including the Land Rover Range Rover, used BMW engines then and in the initial years of Ford’s JLR stewardship. It seems things have now come full circle. BMW currently makes a twin-turbo 4.4 liter V8 that produces anywhere from 440 to 600 horsepower, depending on the application.
Automobile says that a new 4.0 liter V8 is in the works and that it will most likely be the engine that JLR uses. Expect it to be more powerful, more fuel efficient, and lighter than what both BMW and JLR currently offer.


This seems like a win for both companies. BMW gets to offset the cost of a new motor while JLR, a smaller company, doesn’t have to invest in a whole new architecture. As automakers search for ways to cut costs, expect collaborations like this to continue. Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz both
share a four-cylinder engine. Ford and GM have worked together to
design a shared 10-speed automatic. While we may lament the loss of that wonderful Jaguar Land Rover engine, we can still be happy that they haven’t abandoned the V8.


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