Jaguar XJ - WhatCar? Luxury Car Green Award

Jaguar has won the Luxury Car category in this year's What Car? Green Awards with its XJ 3.0 Diesel V6 Luxury model with the judges saying it is the best green luxury car money can buy.

The verdict of the What Car? judges was: "In a class dominated by understated design, the Jaguar XJ’s styling takes your breath away. It’s powerful yet athletic, imposing yet sleek. No other luxury car gets as much attention for the way it looks. You’ll enjoy driving the XJ an awful lot more than most of its competition, too. The Jaguar XJ is stunning, in every sense of the word."

The all-new XJ’s beauty is much more than skin-deep. The XJ benefits from the most advanced, powerful and efficient Jaguar powertrains ever and is constructed using Jaguar’s aerospace-inspired aluminium body technology, which makes the XJ lighter than its rivals by at least 150kg. These technologies significantly improve performance, handling and economy, while delivering increased strength, refinement and safety.

What Car? editor-in-chief Steve Fowler said: "British designed and built, the Jaguar is equipped with an efficient, high-tech diesel engine which in a comparatively light car makes for some spectacular emissions figures: CO2 is just 184g/km, while NOx is an equally impressive 0.142g/km.

"Of course, there’s more to these figures than their environmental impact. That low CO2 return means you’ll pay company car tax at just 28 per cent of the Jaguar’s price, so you’ll pay less to the taxman than you would if you drove most of the XJ’s rivals.

"Look no further if you want a luxury car that’s as good for the driver as it is for the environment."

What Car? considered a range of environmental factors, not just CO2 and other pollutants to choose their winners. The best green cars score highly on other important buying considerations, too – from space and practicality to buying and running costs as well as being great fun to drive and to be in.

The all-new XJ takes a new approach to sustainable motoring, with its lightweight aluminium body structure and advanced powertrains. Jaguar has developed its approach to sustainability by focusing on the ‘lifecycle’ of a vehicle; a more stringent approach to sustainability than standalone measures like fuel consumption or CO2 emissions.

Geoff Cousins, Managing Director, Jaguar UK said: "Environmental considerations are increasingly important to car buyers. By taking a lifecycle approach to the new XJ we have minimised the amount of materials used, we use recycled material and low-energy manufacturing processes, as well as making the vehicle easy to recycle at the end of its life."

Jaguar’s aluminium architecture is a significant contributor to the green credentials of the new XJ. It uses around 50 percent recycled material in the body, and plans are in place to increase that figure to 75 percent. This alone creates a saving of three tonnes of CO2 per vehicle, compared to a bodyshell made from new aluminium.

Geoff Cousins added: "This accolade from What Car? demonstrates that we have successfully created a green car without compromising the quality, luxury and sports car-like drive that our customers want to enjoy in their Jaguar. This all helps make the Jaguar XJ more desirable which boosts residual values - industry experts already predict that the new Jaguar XJ will have class-leading residual values; better than Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz over the next three years.

"Sales of the new Jaguar XJ, which arrived in dealers at the end of May, have helped Jaguar to a great sales result for the first half of 2010, along with a strong performance for XF and XK. In its first full month on sale, the XJ has taken the market lead outselling the Mercedes S Class and BMW 7-Series."

Equipped with the 3.0-litre AJ-V6D turbodiesel, the XJ delivers an impressive combined economy figure of 40.1mpg and CO2 emissions of 184g/km. The new Jaguar XJ is priced from £53,900.