It's Official: Jaguar's 'R' Brand Is Going To Die

Jaguar is set to cull its 'R' brand, to give its SVR vehicles more distinction

29 Mar 2018

We enjoyed living with ‘our’ Jaguar F-Type R long-term test car very much. It was fast, comfortable, just about handy enough in the bends and sounded utterly filthy, making us wonder why you’d bother with the SVR version. It seems we’re not alone in thinking that, and Jaguar has cottoned on to the problem.

“We have found F-Type R and F-Type SVR kind of compete against each other….SVR has a challenging time because the R is such a good car in the first place,” Jaguar SVO design director Wayne Burgess told Auto Express. He reckons the whole R/SVR thing is confusing customers, and there just isn’t enough distinction between the two.

The solution? Jaguar will eventually kill off the R brand, to “allow SVR to really shine.”

In the future, Jaguar models will have a sporty ‘S’ model, followed by the full-fat SVR with nothing in between. It’s something the British company has already done with the F-Pace - before the SVR version came along, the range was topped by the 375bhp V6 S. There hasn’t been an R version, nor will there be in the future. The F-Type R will remain on sale for now, but it will presumably be discontinued without a replacement when the current-generation of the sports car is retired.

Jaguar R brand: hold X to pay respects…

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Just as long as it retains the supercharged V8 I’ll be alright

Same

At least the SVR will not be a V6 or in-line 4 because we love V8s

The trouble is that the 5.0 V8 is going out in 2020

I believe they’ve already announced its date of death

‘S’ is like the new AMG lite models, ‘R’ is like the full fat AMG models, and ‘SVR’ is like the Black Series AMG models.

‘S’s are sporty and ‘SVR’s are mental. I don’t see why there isn’t a place for an ‘R’ between the two. But then I’m not a marketing professional.

Because Jaguar is a much smaller company than Merc - they don’t have the scale to fill every niche. It’s a shame, but I do get why Jaguar has done this

To be honest I think this is a great idea. The british motor industry almost completely died when leyland merged a bunch of car companies, what happened was just alot of infighting which killed a fair bit of the companies. If jaguar can avoid this then im all for it.