Badge Of Honour

When an already sporty car gets souped up by a crack team of engineers, the result is a hyper car that sounds like a beast comfortable in its territory and feels at home on any track in the world

- Yogendra Pratap

The JLR put together a small team and invested in a new facility to be able to customise cars and create halo products for its two companies just a few years back. This is the Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) division and amongst its bag of tricks is an SVR badge that it puts on vehicles that have been souped up for performance. There are currently two such SVR badged vehicles and we have driven both of them in this issue starting with the Range Rover Sport SVR and finishing with the F-type SVR. Amongst the division’s vehicle portfolio are armoured vehicles, SUVs with extreme capability as well as ultra-luxurious vehicles.

The F-type to start with is a sports car with great driving dynamics as one expects of all Jaguars and hence to begin with, it makes for good base material for a performance vehicle. There is actually little to distinguish this incredibly fast F-type from the rest of its siblings up front, but a closer inspection reveals the huge air intakes on the sides of the front grille and the tiny SVR logo that signifies that this is not a normal car. At the back though, the story is slightly different. One can’t but help noticing the huge carbon-fibre rear wing in place of the deployable wing on the boot-lid and there are now outboard mounted titanium quad exhaust pipes as well, to compliment the sound.