Jaguar's C-X75 delights, inspires.. and frustrates (w/VIDEO)

Be forewarned, this video will leave your wanting for more, in Jaguar’s own words “..the C-X75 is the most technologically advanced road car ever conceived” and it will never be produced.

That’s it. With one hand they give and the other take away.

Of course if you’ve been following the C-X75’s development then you’ll already know the story. Jaguar’s $1m hybrid supercar designed to take on Porsche’s 918 Spyder, McLaren’s P1 and Ferrari’s LaFerrari, which the Coventry car maker collaborated on with F1-team Williams Advanced Engineering division.

SEE ALSO: Jaguar cancels C-X75 production and why this is ‘good news’ for JLR’s future.

Then in December 2012, the project was pulled due to worsening global economic conditions and the C-X75 joined the history books as yet another grandee supercar denied the chance to reach its potential.

Given the project was so close to the end, Jaguar decided to complete it, not to productionise it for customer deliveries but to create a rolling showcase of Jaguar’s capabilities and earn a few brownie points at future PR events.

As a reminder, the C-X75 produces in excess of 850bhp from a 502bhp, 1.6-litre turbocharged and supercharged four-cylinder engine with two electric motors adding a further 390bhp. It can emit less than 89g/km of CO2 and has a pure electric vehicle range of 37 miles (60km).

The C-X75 started out in 2010 as a showcar to celebrate 75 years of the Jaguar brand. In May 2011, a handful of engineers from Williams and Jaguar began turning it into a production reality.

The CX75 shows that an environmental future can be exciting.

The challenge was huge – according to Rob Atkin, Jaguar’s C-X75 Vehicle & Programme Manager, they needed to achieve “..the performance of a Bugatti Veyron, the range of a Chevy Volt and the C02 of a Toyota Prius.”

The video takes us through the remarkable journey and enables us to hear for the first time the awesome 1.6-litre engine as it revs to a little over 10,000rpm. It has the world’s highest specific power output – at 313bhp per litre – to put that in context, that’s 60% more than the best road cars on sale today.

According to Paul Newsome, Jaguar’s Programme Director for the C-X75 “..this is delivered at 10,300rpm while still providing perfect driveability at low revs.”

Thanks to its advanced 7-speed automated manual transmission, that shifts gears in less than 200 milliseconds, the C-X75 accelerates from 0-100mph in less than six seconds (McLaren P1 – 0-125mph in less than 7 seconds) and can reach a top speed of 220mph.

The car’s deployable aerofoil and underfloor aerodynamics create more than 200kg of downforce at 200mph, enhancing its high-speed stability.

We’re glad Jaguar finished the C-X75, even if we’ll never get the chance to buy it or see it on the road.

“Incredible though the car is, the important story is that the technology that’s being developed on it has the potential to be used in future JLR products,” said Newsome. “The CX75 shows that an environmental future can be exciting.”