The latest addition to Jaguar's portfolio, the E-PACE, an SUV positioned below the F-PACE, already carries a record. Certified by Guinness World Records, the E-PACE became the record holder for the distance performed in a barrel roll – a spiral jump, rotating 270º on a longitudinal axis – having covered approximately 15.3 meters. If you haven't seen it, watch the video here.
The spectacularity of the maneuver, however, does not reveal all the backstage work that was behind it. We now have the opportunity to see the efforts of the British brand and Terry Grant, the double – no stranger to this type of situation –, to make the leap with the known success.
In the movie we can see the entire process to achieve the perfect execution of the final jump. And we realized the engineering complexity involved in getting a 1.8-ton SUV to “fly” the right way for a perfect landing.
And it all started with computer simulations, which allowed us to understand the physics behind the jump, defining not only the attack speed but also the geometry of the ramps. Putting it into practice, it's time to build the ramp. And at this stage it ends up looking more like an amusement park than a testing ground.
The used prototype, with the body of the Range Rover Evoque – a model that shares the same basis as the Jaguar E-PACE – was launched, over and over again, autonomously, down the ramp towards a huge air cushion. Sounds fun…
Terry Grant would also end up launching himself onto the huge air cushion, before building the second ramp, on land, which would serve as the final “landing strip”. According to Terry Grant, despite all the “beating” it took, the prototype always remained structurally intact.
After all the simulations and tests, the apparatus was moved to the location where the final stunt would be performed, and the prototype gave way to the production Jaguar E-PACE. The movie remains: