Kincsem hyper-hybrid to be ‘son of Jaguar C-X75’

Bak wants Kincsem to ultimately be a sub-brand used for the most luxurious models his new company produces. The hypercar and the first, plushest SUVs that follow will be separately identified with different names and numbers. After that, there will be a premium SUV made in greater numbers. The brand name Helvetia will be used.

Although the hypercar will be built in the UK, the SUVs – both the luxury model and the following premium one – will come from a new factory yet to be established in Hungary.

In size and layout, the new hypercar will be quite similar to the C-X75, said Bak, although there will be no question of copying the shape of the original Jaguar.

As well as providing power for the four-motor, four-wheel-drive powertrain, the engine will charge an on-board battery that will give the car a useful electric-only range for zero-emissions driving in city centres. This powertrain will subsequently be used to propel the company’s luxury SUVs.

The engine will have no mechanical connection with the wheels, but the Kincsem’s engineers are designing controls that will make the model feel and sound like a conventional car accelerating through the gears.

“It will be an amazing sound,” said Bak. “We want to give drivers all the torque and the quick response of a very high-performance EV with the sound of the finest conventional supercar.”

Bak and his team are still finalising deals with their potential British partners but describe their engine supplier as “probably the best-known engine company with F1 connections” and the chassis designer as “a close associate” of that company.

The electric motor supplier is British, too, and already well known for its own range of vehicles. More details will be revealed later this year.

The life and death of the Jaguar C-X75

When Jaguar first announced its stunning C-X75 concept car, just before the Paris motor show in 2010, the idea was to produce this £1 million-a-time technology flagship in partnership with Williams, building a maximum of 250 cars from 2013 in a factory built especially at Williams for the job.

The concept had two small Bladon Jets gas turbines behind the occupants to run the generator that would power its electric drive motors, but when that idea couldn’t be productionised, the car was re-engineered with an extremely highly developed supercharged and turbocharged 1.6-litre four-cylinder and seven-speed gearbox. Working with the car’s four motors, this yielded 888bhp.

The C-X75 was capable of a 0-60mph time of 2.9sec, a 205mph top speed and an electric-only range of up to 31 miles. However, financial difficulties after the 2008-10 recession induced Jaguar to kill the project, diverting cash to expanding its more popular model range.

A handful of cars were kitted out with Jaguar V8 motors for use in the 2015 Bond film Spectre, and one is believed to have survived and been road-registered.

Why a Callum hypercar still works

It’s the great groundswell of regret that greeted the 2012 killing of the most beautiful of modern Jaguar concepts that makes you so sure a ‘son of C-X75’ can work now.

Since the discontinuation of his fastest and most radical supercar proposal nine years ago, and before leaving Jaguar to set up his own design business, Ian Callum and his team completed an overhaul of Jaguar’s regular models and added cars such as the Jaguar E-Pace and electric Jaguar I-Pace.

But the Callum creation that lingers in the minds of enthusiasts and on the bedroom walls of young car lovers is the C-X75. It recreates and carries forward the beautiful, complex curves of Jaguars built half a century earlier more successfully than any other recent shape.

Even Sir Ralf Speth, the man at Jaguar Land Rover’s helm when the fateful decision was made, last year expressed regrets that what would have been another history-making Jaguar supercar never appeared in production. Let’s hope that Callum and Tibor Bak can redress the balance.