Jaguar's supercharged 5.0-liter V8 engine is being discontinued after 15 years as the brand goes all-electricOnly 60 F-Pace SVR 575 Ultimate Edition models will be built, exclusively for Australia, marking the end of an eraThe brand is abandoning its current customers to chase Bentley and Maybach buyers with expensive electric GTs Right, this is it then. The end of Jaguar as we know it. Not the end of the company, you understand – they'll still be making cars, if you can call silent electric refrigerators "cars" – but the end of everything that made Jaguar actually worth bothering with in the first place. The news has just broken that Jaguar's supercharged 5.0-liter V8 engine is being put out to pasture forever. Fifteen years of faithful service, fifteen years of making the sort of noises that remind you why internal combustion engines are one of humanity's greatest achievements, and now it's being sent to the automotive equivalent of a retirement home where old engines go to die. To mark this monumentally depressing occasion, Jaguar has announced the F-Pace SVR 575 Ultimate Edition, which is essentially their way of saying "sorry we're killing everything you love about our cars, here's a limited edition to soften the blow." Sixty examples, all bound for Australia, all powered by that glorious supercharged V8 for the very last time. It's like watching someone demolish your childhood home and then offering to sell you a brick as a memento. F-Pace SVR 575 Ultimate Edition specs and pricing The numbers, at least, are properly serious. The supercharged 5.0-liter V8 produces 567 horsepower, which is enough to launch this SUV from standstill to 62 mph in 4.0 seconds. The top speed is 178 mph, which is frankly ridiculous for something that weighs as much as a small building and sits as tall as a cricket pavilion. But here's the thing – it doesn't matter how fast it is, because speed was never really the point. The point was the noise. The point was the feeling that you were driving something with an actual soul, something that could make your spine tingle when you pressed the accelerator and heard that supercharger whine building to a crescendo. The Ultimate Edition comes in four colors that sound like they were chosen by someone having a mid-life crisis: Sorrento Yellow, British Racing Green Gloss, Icy White Gloss, and Ligurian Black Satin. Each one gets the Black Exterior Pack, black roof rails, some Ultimate Edition badges that will probably become collector's items, and 22-inch alloy wheels that cost more than most people's cars.Inside, there's Ebony Semi-Aniline leather with carbon-fiber trim, heated and cooled seats, a head-up display, privacy glass, and a panoramic roof. It's all very nice, all very civilized, and completely irrelevant because none of it makes up for the fact that this is the end of the line. At AUS$182,235 – roughly $118,768 in real money – it's not exactly what you'd call affordable. But then again, neither was the privilege of owning one of the last properly exciting Jaguars ever made. Jaguar's electric future and brand transformation Now, about this "transformation" Jaguar keeps banging on about. They've stopped making everything except the F-Pace, and even that's about to get the chop. Instead, they're planning to reinvent themselves as some sort of electric luxury brand that wants to compete with Bentley and Maybach. The preview of this brave new world is the Type 00 Concept, which will apparently become a four-door GT when it reaches production later this year. But here's the crucial bit – it won't be aimed at people who currently buy Jaguars. Oh no, that would be far too sensible. Instead, Jaguar has decided to abandon their existing customers entirely and chase after people who already drive Bentleys and Mercedes-Maybachs. People who, it should be noted, are increasingly skeptical about expensive electric vehicles and might not be in any hurry to swap their beautifully engineered German luxury barges for whatever Jaguar cobbles together in their new electric incarnation. It's like watching a perfectly good restaurant decide to stop serving the food that made them famous and instead try to become a molecular gastronomy establishment because that's where the "real money" is. Sometimes it works. Usually, it doesn't. The F-Pace will disappear soon, taking with it any semblance of affordability or accessibility that Jaguar once offered. What comes next will be expensive, electric, and aimed at people who probably couldn't care less about the marque's racing heritage or its tradition of building cars that stirred the soul. And that's the real tragedy here. Not just that they're killing the V8 – engines come and go, after all – but that they're killing the idea of Jaguar as a brand that ordinary enthusiasts could aspire to own. Once upon a time, you could buy a proper Jaguar without needing to be a millionaire. Those days are officially over. The F-Pace SVR 575 Ultimate Edition isn't just the last V8-powered Jaguar. It's the last Jaguar that remembers what Jaguar used to be about. After this, it's all electric luxury and seven-figure price tags and customers who view cars as status symbols rather than objects of desire. So if you're in Australia and you've got $118,768 burning a hole in your pocket, you might want to consider buying one of these 60 Ultimate Editions. Not because it's a particularly brilliant SUV – though it is – but because it represents the end of an era. The end of Jaguar as a company that understood the importance of making cars that could make your heart race. Everything that comes after this will be very quiet indeed.
