Project 7 to Shetland

Earlier this year Rob and I were privileged to be allowed to take the prototype Jaguar Project 7 (VE15 EVD) to Shetland. This unique car belongs to the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust (The Trust) and is part of their collection which is kept at Gaydon in Warwickshire.

It is the objective of The Trust to get these rare and unique cars into the public eye as much as possible in order to promote Jaguar cars and the work of The Trust and for this purpose the cars are loaned to a small number of trusted volunteers to be taken to events and on tours throughout the UK and abroad.

As The Trust were aware that we were travelling to the Shetland Motor Show in Lerwick in June of this year they arranged for Rob and I to collect the Project 7 from Gaydon, drive it back to our home in the Scottish Borders and thence onwards to Shetland. Rob and I used the Project 7 whilst touring Shetland for several days so it was seen by many islanders before being displayed at the Shetland Motor Show which was held at the Clickimin Leisure Centre in Lerwick.

We were accompanied by a group of motoring enthusiasts in an interesting selection of cars, but it was the Project 7 that stole the show!

Based on the Jaguar F type, the Project 7 is a collectors’ edition high performance sports car with a limited run of only 250 worldwide. At its launch in 2014 it was the fastest and most powerful production Jaguar ever.

Designed by Jaguar’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) team, it debuted at the 2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed in the 60th anniversary year of the Jaguar D-type racer that inspired its design.

The name Project 7 was inspired by Jaguar’s proud racing past. Its name is derived from the seven times Jaguar has won the famous Le Mans 24-hour race. Three of those historic wins came in Jaguar’s iconic 1950s D-type so the brief to the design team was to conceive a modern day D-type and the Project 7 is the exhilarating result.

Key design elements include the D-type-inspired fairing behind the driver’s head, shorter windshield, new front bumper, carbon-fibre front splitter, side skirts, rear diffuser and adjustable rear spoiler. Rollover hoops for both driver and passenger are also integrated into the design. In Project 7, the design DNA of the historic D-type has been blended with that of the cutting edge F-TYPE.

Powered by Jaguar’s 5.0 litre supercharged V8 engine, the all-aluminium-bodied car can achieve acceleration from 0-60 mph in 3.8 seconds with an electronically-limited top speed of 186 mph. Project 7 is fully road-legal and features a complex removable roof which is assembled manually when required and stored in the boot, leaving just enough room for an overnight bag, so packing can be challenging in a car which is strictly a two-seater!!!