Jaguar XE SV Project 8 claims Nürburgring record for production four-door

In just 7 minutes and 21.23 seconds, The Jaguar Project 8 lapped the Nürburgring.

It’s Jag’s limited edition answer to the likes of the AMG C63 Black or the M4 GTS, only it has four doors.

But there’s a catch – the car Jaguar used is a prototype which Jaguar says is the same specification as the production car will be.

Jaguar is calling it “the fastest ever time by a four-door sedan in production-intent specification,” which means it can’t officially claim to have done it in a production car yet.

Still, this puts the Project 8 almost 11 seconds ahead of the Alfa Romeo Guilia QV’s 7.32 lap time, so even if the real production Project 8 loses a couple of seconds, it’s still got the title.

The special edition car, based from Jaguar’s XE, runs on 5.0-litre supercharged V8 power, with 441kW at its disposal, a 0-100km/h claim of 3.7s and a top speed of 322km/h.

Only 300 will be built, and Jaguar is asking £149,995 ($264,142 AUD) for each in the UK.

Jaguar SVO director Mark Stanton says building the Project 8 was an ambitious task, but the fact that Jaguar is claiming the record for fastest four-door around the ‘Ring makes it worth it.

“The SVO design and engineering team’s mission was to create the most track-focused road-legal Jaguar in history – not only the fastest, but also the most agile,” Stanton says.

“As a result, only the roof and front door skins of Project 8’s body are carried-over unaltered from XE and 75 per cent of its mechanical hardware is new.

“This astonishing Nürburgring Nordschleife record validates the success of such extensive changes.”

Whether the road car can make it truly official is yet to be seen.