So this is just a sort of Jaguar & Land Rover cross-over post with a little history.  Both Jaguar & Land Rover have been connected on and off for many years and now it appears to be permanent, especially with all the part sharing that they’re just starting to really take advantage of.

At the Paris motor show, where the Range Rover Evoque was revealed, Jaguar had a concept to show, the CX-75, an electric vehicle, that uses gas turbines as a range extender:

The 330km/h (205mph) four-wheel drive supercar is capable of running in purely electric (zero tailpipe emissions) mode for 110km (68 miles) on a six-hour domestic plug-in charge. The innovative, lightweight micro gas-turbines are also capable of very quickly and efficiently recharging the Lithium-ion batteries, giving the car a theoretical range of 900km (560 miles).
This remarkable range-extension system is a result of Jaguar’s research engineers adopting a clean-sheet approach to the question of powering the supercars of the future. The C-X75 turns to the very latest evolution of a pioneering British technology: the gas turbine.
Developed in partnership with Bladon Jets, the miniaturized turbine blade – the first viable axial-flow micro-turbine – increases the compression and efficiency of micro gas-turbines to the point at which they can be viewed as a realistic power source. Each of the micro gas-turbines weighs just 35kg and produces 70kW of power at a constant 80,000rpm.

So where am I going with this?  As soon as I read about the gas turbine, I remembered the Rover JET 1, a vehicle touted as the world’s first gas turbine powered car.  Those early Rover gas turbine vehicles were created under the management & design of the Wilks brothers, Spencer & Maurice – they in turn hired their nephew Charles Spencer “Spen” King away from Rolls Royce to be an engineer on the then top secret project.  Spen King actually set the first speed record for a gas turbine car at ~152MPH in 1952.

For anyone who didn’t know, it was Maurice Wilks who actually thought up the Land Rover as a British replacement for his Willys Jeep after WWII.  And Spen King is known as the father of the Range Rover.

This gas turbine connection from the 1940’s to todays Jaguar Land Rover was an interesting connection to the past, and I hadn’t seen it mentioned anywhere else.

For those interested, here are some links to more info:

http://www.rover.org.nz/pages/jet/jet5.htm

http://home.ican.net/~magnet/p4/variants.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine#Concept_Cars