We’re used to waiting a while for concept cars to become a reality, with models like the awesome new Renault 5 taking a good few years to make it off the drawing board and onto the road. Now, however, a Jaguar concept looks set to finally hit the highway almost 14 years after it was first premiered.
The Jaguar C-X75 was unveiled by the British marque at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, where it wowed fans with its incredible styling and intriguing hybrid-electric powertrain. The car was then slated to enter production in 2013, when the company pledged to build 250 examples in partnership with Williams Advanced Engineering – you know, the people behind one of the most successful F1 teams in history.
However, disaster struck the project and before any of the production models could be built, Jaguar announced it was killing the car off. Five development cars had been built, but these weren’t road legal and lived the majority of their lives behind the camera in 2015 Bond movie “Spectre.”
Now, however, the car is being revived and it sounds like it may finally get to live out its dreams and hit the highway in anger for the first time.
The project is being undertaken by automotive design house Callum, which is headed by Ian Callum who led the design team that originally created the C-X75. To bring the car to life, the company has gotten its hands on one of the five remaining cars that was created for the Bond movie.
The car in question is the only example that’s licensed to drive on UK roads and comes with a roaring Jag V8 mounted at the rear. The five-liter engine is paired up with rally-derived suspension and a tubular spaceframe chassis that the rest of the car has been built around.
To prep all of this for something as mundane as the daily commute, the Callum engineering team has had to make all kinds of tweaks and changes to the ex-stunt car. The team has replaced the glass in its windows and even fitted a quieter exhaust system.
On top of the legal changes that had to be made, the team also worked to make the car look a bit less like a pre-production car that had been used in a movie. This included tightening up panel gaps, removed various quick-release latches and resurfaced the car’s body panels.
After all that, the C-X75 looks exquisite. It’s still such a shame that this car never actially made it into production, but at least having one road-worthy example out there means there’s a slim chance I might see it on my next jaunt across the UK.