Jaguar and Land Rover use AJ supercharged V8 engine. This engine brought them much luck and of course money. Jaguar equipped Jaguar F-Type SVR with this gasoline engine and now they are using it for F-Type R. This Engine has 5.0-liter capacity, so it is useful for the Land Rover Defender. But Ford made the Situation hard for these English companies.
Last summer, Ford announced that they are getting ready to shut down the Bridgend Site, where AJ V8 is produced. Now the time has arrived and there is just one month left for Jaguar and Land Rover to find a solution. As Autocar magazine reports, the JLR Engine Manufacturing Center in Wolverhampton is the new responsible of producing the AJ V8. This movement needs to relocate the equipment’s and maybe the employees too. As JLR announced:
"Manufacture of the JLR-designed V8 petrol engines previously made at Bridgend will move to the JLR Engine Manufacturing Centre, with further detail to be confirmed at a later date,"
Anyway, Bridgend plant has increased the rate of production and now they are making more engines to cover the time that they are moving to the new place. On the other hand, it seems that Assembly of Ford Sigma and Dragon engines are postponed so they can make more V8 faster.
The improvement of the AJ V8 is some thing about to happen and JLR has a 5-year plane for it. This factory also would adopt BMW’s V8 too, so that makes the AJ a universal engine. So, seeing a BMW with a supercharged AJ is not like a big surprise. what would come next? Who knows?