Video: World’s fastest saloon car beats its own record

The world’s fastest saloon car has bet its own record.

Jaguar’s XE XV Project 8 lowered the fastest Nürburgring time for a four-door production car to 7 min 18.361 seconds on 20.6km Nordschleife lap.

The previous record was set in November 2017 by Project 8 development Vincent Radermecker, who returned to cut 2.9 seconds off the time.

The record is also seven seconds faster than any other four-door production car has achieved.

Project 8 is also the first vehicle to set an official whole lap record in the Nürburgring’s mid-range production car class, lapping the 20.0km circuit length in 7min 23.2163 seconds.

Radermecker returned to the German circuit in a production-specification two-seat track pack version of Project 8.

The record was helped by Project 8’s newly fitted Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tyres, tested and chosen by engineers for their capability on the track, the road-legal tyres use rubber compounds directly transferred from Michelin’s competition tyres.

“The original Nürburgring record set by Jaguar’s XE SV Project 8 demonstrated the extreme performance envelope of the world’s fastest production sedan, but the SV team is driven by a motorsport mentality and we knew Project 8 could go even faster. This new official record time is a fitting reward for everyone who has played a part in pushing the boundaries for our customers with Project 8,” Jaguar special vehicle operations engineering director Jamal Hameedi says.

Project 8 can go from 0 to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds and has a top speed of 320km/h.

A display Jaguar XE SV Project 8 is expected to land in New Zealand later this year. Interested parties are advised to contact their local Jaguar retailer for more information.