It used to be that 500 horsepower put you exclusively in the supercar conversation but now luxury automakers are using technology to rein in that muscle for everyday driving. We pilot Jaguar's XFR to see how a supercharged V8 can achieve stunning specs while active technology helps drivers wield that power with ease.
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BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Welcome to Translogic. I'm Bradley Hasemeyer. That's what 510 horses and a professional driver looks like, but how does a normal person rein in that kind of power? We use technology to tame the beast.
That is a wonderful sound. That is a 5.0 liter supercharged V8 producing 510 horsepower. This is the kind of car that might compete with the BMW M5, the E63 AMG, and it just is brutal. It's got all kinds of technology on this car that's keeping the car on the road, and making me not look like an idiot when I'm driving. All right, so we're here with Tim, product specialist from Jaguar. Tim, thanks so much for being with us.
TIM PHILIPPO: Thanks Bradley.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: So we're standing in front of a-- a couple of rocking machines, 510 horsepower. How do you control all that?
TIM PHILIPPO: A lot of technology goes into this. The idea is that we want a car that you can drive to work Monday through Friday, elegant, normal, sane human behavior. But then on the weekend or when that road opens up, turn a dial, flip a switch, and this thing becomes a beast.
What the car does is it looks at that-- your inputs, looks at the way you're driving, it looks at the road surface and the modes that you put it in. That kind of allows it to kind of change personality. So, you can put it to sport mode. The adaptive dynamics makes the suspension firmer. The transmission is gonna downshift faster, it's gonna hold RPM's. The active differential is looking at your steering inputs, your throttle inputs, looking at the available traction it has, and it's proactively distributing torque to the outside rear tire to help to kind of control your line, kind of help you pulls-- you know, push you further into the corner towards the apex. So really it kind of comes alive. But then, you know, when you get back into your neighborhood, all systems off. Coast back into your driveway, not wake up the neighbors, right?
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Right, no wake. No wake as you head back in.
TIM PHILIPPO: There's two drivers selectable modes. There's sport mode with the transmission, and dynamic mode for the suspension. So that's how the car knows what your intentions are. But even when you don't have it in those modes, it's still looking at your inputs. So if you're just driving down the highway and a deer crosses your path--
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Oh shoot, a deer.
TIM PHILIPPO: All the systems are still there. The active differential is still gonna help you out.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: No problem. And it just looks like a four door car. I mean, granted there's some aggressive styling.
TIM PHILIPPO: There's something really fun about driving in a car that you know is one of the fastest cars on the road. It catches people by surprise.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Yeah. Oh hey, what's up? You wanna-- oh, you wanna take me on? I'm just in a businessman sedan. Switch to sport mode. Bye bye. Bye bye. 90, 100, 110, 120, braking. Downshifting, using the paddle shifters, and they shift super smooth. That's completely clean. A lot of the higher end, you know, Lamborghinis, the Audi R8, cars like that, when you're shifting with their automated manuals, you really get kind of a jerk. But when you're in a car like this, it's completely luxed out, full of leather and suede and 1,200 watts of stereo speaker ability. You don't need that. You don't need that rough ride. You do need a good sound and a smooth shift.
All right, so here we are with Doug Van Den Brink. Doug, thanks for being with us.
DOUG VAN DEN BRINK: My pleasure.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: We are on a track. We are wide open, and there's no one around. So this is a perfect chance to test out some of this technology.
DOUG VAN DEN BRINK: We'll hold our button down, and we'll go to completely DSC off. I'm gonna have to pay really close attention because it's all me [? and ?] the car. The car is gonna have a lot of understeer if I-- but then once I'm back in, I just have to maintain that throttle.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Yeah.
DOUG VAN DEN BRINK: But now the good news is--
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: That is good news. That slow whoosh, oh it's amazing. Oh my gosh. This is amazing.
DOUG VAN DEN BRINK: As you can see, the car gave me the ability to do whatever I wanted to do.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Yeah, you were in control.
DOUG VAN DEN BRINK: I-- well, as it were.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: All right, so let's talk about the future of Jaguar for a second. There is a rumor out there, there's an XFR-S. Can you talk about that?
TIM PHILIPPO: Well there is an XKR-S model. They share power trains otherwise, so maybe.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Maybe?
TIM PHILIPPO: You know, we've twice had the title the world's fastest car. We like power, we like speed, we love performance, so we're always trying to see what's the next step that we can take. I can't confirm anything, but I can say our engineers are always hard at work.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: All right, so we can't all drive like Doug, but it's these technologies that we're seeing more and more in performance vehicles that are helping us stay in control. And it's nice to know you can turn them off when you've got a empty Navy airstrip for the day. All right, for Translogic I'm Bradley Hasemeyer. See you next time.
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