A few weeks ago I made this observation regarding a two door prototype I spotted near home: www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=48964&...f
Well yesterday, I had a disguised prototype right outside my own house!
Head down, and digging in my front garden, a rorty v8 echoed off the houses that I initally put down as being a near neighbour's Cobra. Looking up however I saw a heavily disguised burgundy saloon car with only one occupant that then disappearing round the corner. Amazed to see a prototype in village residential street, it was a case of spade down, in to the house, grab camera, and saunter round the corner - only to find it had disappeared in to a garage of one of the houses in private courtyard (nowhere else it could be).
Coming out to resume digging duties a while later, blow me if it wasn't parked about fifty metres away, engine burbling, so with no time to grab camera, I went for a look. On seeing me doing so, the driver engaged eye contact and promptly drove off but had to pass me in the process.
Although wearing a fabric cover, the head-on stance said "Jaguar" or Maserati to me more than anything else, and I noticed that it was a left hooker on foreign plates. I also noticed that the driver now had a passenger, so perhaps with my relative proximity to Gaydon (and Coventry if this was the new XF saloon) this was a case of an engineer unofficially bringing his work home or collecting a colleague. Headlight dipped beam came from tiny Xenons pushed right out to the sides of the car, and rear lights were LEDs with a horizontal red band through a clear cluster.
As it passed I noticed that the A pillar plus roof gutter and side window sills as far back as the B pillar (further back was hidden under fabric) were encased in wide chrome strip that for some reason the proportions of which reminded me of Rover 600! Roof profile, wheelbase, and overall stance of the car however was 5 Series BMW, though the rear was disrupted with a huge "box" plonked under the fabric. Wheels were painted black and I got no hint of detail beyond that they looked like being at least 18 or 19 inchers.
The car gave the appearance of surfing along on effortless torque, lazily auto-slurring in to second gear as it passed me, and once again very rorty in the exhaust department. This was nothing though compared to what came 30 seconds later; with the car leaving the village, I could it for an age as it disappeared in to the distance up the Fosse Way. That V8 woofle had become a hard metallic wail more like an M5's V10, each gearchange banging in without pause; almost certainly a good paddleshift gearbox at work, and infact so quick acting I thought "DSG". After some considerable time, I caught high rev downchange after downchange followed by one last acceleration wail as the sound evaporated in to the afternoon air.
Would love to know if it was the XF.
If it was, it will sell on sound alone.
Living as written in spitting distance of the Fosse Way and a stone's throw from Gaydon, I see prototype cars relatively often. I've never got a photo though, and in having given up yesterday on reaching private courtyard, and put the camera back in the house because I was doing a muddy job, clearly have a long way to go to being paparazzi! ;-)
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