Video: Jaguar built a Hot Wheels track through the F-Type design studio

03rd December 2019

Bob Murray

In recent years no car company has unveiled its new models as spectacularly as Jaguar Land Rover. Traffic-stopping stunts in world capitals, epic driving challenges, world record barrel rolls and loop the loops, and boats, helicopters, the Red Arrows and lots of Lego have all featured in the all-important new-model reveal. You name it, they’ve done it. So how to introduce Jaguar’s big news today, the new F-Type?

With a 1/64 scale model and a load of Hot Wheels track, that’s how. Who said times were tough at JLR?

Actually the stunt is a triumph of imagination over deep pockets. All that Hot Wheels track – 232 metres or 760 feet of it, enough to far outreach the height of the BT Tower in London – was laid out on a tortuous course through the new Jaguar Design Studio. On its way it passed by all the different stages involved in designing the sports car, from sketching to clay modelling via colour and trim.

Then they let a car loose on it: a Hot Wheels model of the handsome new F-Type complete with camouflage wrap. Twenty five loop-the-loops, three gravity-defying jumps and 44 corners later, the model comes to rest alongside the real thing. The 3D printed model is said to have reached scale speeds of up to 300mph along the custom-built track.

Jaguar design director Julian Thomson told us: “As a designer and huge car enthusiast, Hot Wheels models have been a part of my life since childhood. They capture the imagination, make owning the car of your dreams a reality, and give you the first opportunity to actually ‘drive’ a car.”

It all makes for a fun video – if not quite in the no-expense-spared class of recent JLR new-model launches like our three favourites…

Land Rover Discovery, 2016

Number one has to be the 2016 reveal of the latest Discovery doesn’t it? It takes plenty of chutzpah (and money) to make a working model of Tower Bridge out of 5.8 million Lego bricks and float it down the Seine prior to the opening of the Paris Motor Show.

Jaguar F-Pace, 2015

If you want some exciting automotive derring-do who better to call than Terry Grant? It was he who drive the then-new Jaguar F-Pace into the record books by flinging the SUV into the world’s tallest (62ft high!) loop-the loop.

Jaguar XE, 2014

Water (the Thames this time) again featured in the unveiling of the Jaguar XE – the new saloon was sped up river on a barge after being dropped by a helicopter over London. Following a flypast by the Red Arrows, obviously.