Jaguar announced yesterday that its 2013 Jaguar XJ and XF sedans will come with instinctive all-wheel drive. The models were officially introduced to the public in a synthetic winter wonderland in High Line Park in Manhattan's meatpacking district. On-hand to help Jaguar with the launch were 30 Rock stars Jane Krakowski and Tracy Morgan, and figure skater Johnny Weir.
Like Us on Facebook
The new models underwent 18 months of testing in a variety of conditions, including frozen lakes and the split friction coefficient surfaces of the Jaguar Land Rover development facility in Sweden.
Jaguar calls its all-wheel drive system an active torque-management system that uses a rear-drive bias that shifts power to the front as needed. The models have a new supercharged 340 horsepower 3-liter V6 engine, and Jaguar insists that no performance or speed is lost by the all-wheel drive system.
"The additional choices of V6 engines and all-wheel drive to our Jaguar luxury sedan lineup is massively important to the brand's business potential here in the United States," Andy Goss, president of Jaguar Land Rover North America, said in a statement. "In the northern half of the United States more than 80 percent of our competitors' luxury sedan sales are all-wheel drive equipped and more than 90 percent have either all-wheel drive or V6 power. With V6 power and all-wheel drive alongside our high-performance V8 rear-wheel drive models, Jaguar will now be competing in luxury market marketplace that is up to10 times larger and will transform the relevance of this iconic brand in the US."
