Motoring: Designer’s dream

I have seen the future and it looks like a Jaguar. It’s sleek and curvaceous and, although it’s a fraction under four-feet high, ingress and egress are easier than in a flattened fag-packet Ferrari. A 195bhp electric motor at each wheel means 0–62mph in 3.4 seconds and zero tailpipe emissions in urban use. Switch on the diesel-powered twin turbines and you can recharge on the move, giving a range (with a 60-litre tank) of 560 miles and nugatory emissions of 28g/km of CO2. Above all, it’s beautiful. That’s what makes you think it must be a Jaguar.

Confirmation came in the form of Jaguar’s legendary designer, Ian Callum, in Knightsbridge to present the C-X75 on a morning of frosted sunlight. Outside, beyond the plate glass, tourists snapped it, children posed against it, navvies rested on their shovels, grown men peered with worrying intensity, ladies paused on the way to Harvey Nichols.