In preparation for a full championship effort in 2010, the team plans to enter the last two events on the 2009 ALMS schedule using the track time for testing and development.

The car is currently undergoing extensive system tests at RSR’s East Lansing, Michigan facility and is being prepared for a performance evaluation and shakedown prior to Road Atlanta.

The team will be hosting a press conference on Thursday, September 24 at Road Atlanta to officially unveil the car and drivers for 2009, and tire partners.

RSR will face a flurry of competition in GT2 from the likes of Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Corvette and others. Fourteen GT2 machines are currently entered for the 1,000-mile/10-hour road race classic. The Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta will be held September 23rd -26th.

The mid-engined 2+2 Lotus Evora combines a super stiff extruded and bonded aluminium chassis with vehicle dynamics knowledge employed to tune its race-car derived double wishbone suspension.

Roger Becker, vehicle engineering director for Lotus, said: “The dynamic ability and driving experience of the Evora were the foundation of the engineering process and we are delighted that Autocar has recognised this by giving the Evora this accolade. The Evora offers the great Lotus driving experience in a very comfortable, practical, refined and efficient package, and with only 205 g/km of CO2 it shows that the Evora is a supercar for the 21st century.”

Luke Bennett, director of Lotus Cars, added: “We are really pleased to win this title as it not only demonstrates the engineering expertise and brilliant manufacturing at Lotus, but also asserts our position in this very exclusive and competitive sector. There is huge global demand for the Evora and to cope with this high demand we are taking on over 150 manufacturing staff, which is roughly a 30% increase.”

Preparation for the closures comes just days after the company released its new flagship, the latest version of the Jaguar XJ beloved by prime ministers and top British executives.

The car was launched at a glitzy party in London’s Saatchi Gallery on Thursday, to critical acclaim. Management at the group and its owner, India’s Tata Motors, are hoping the new car, which goes on sale in Britain early next year, will breathe some life into sales that have been struggling since last autumn.

Last month Tata Motors revealed that mounting losses at the UK carmaker had pushed it into its first annual loss of $522m (£322m) in seven years, and warned drastic cost-cutting should be expected. It said sales at its British subsidiary had fallen by about one third.

Jaguar Land Rover, which employs some 15,000 people in the UK, has so far avoided the lengthy shutdowns that some other carmakers have used to save money and run down stock. Honda, for example, closed its plant at Swindon for three months.

Instead, the Midlands group has taken other measures, such as extending its Christmas break to two weeks, moving to a four-day week and laying off around 2,000 temporary staff.

It is understood, however, that one option now under consideration is an extended closure of the three UK plants over the summer, accompanied by another round of job cuts.

Yesterday the company explained that there was no concrete plan. “We have always said there may be a need in the future to take further action, but there are no plans at present,” a spokesman said.

Jaguar Land Rover is still trying to convince the government to provide a loan guarantee that would unlock a £340m advance from the European Investment Bank. The EIB gave the green light two months ago, but cannot dispense the cash until Britain agrees to repay it if Jaguar Land Rover goes under.

The Sunday Times revealed in May that the EIB advance was being considered as part of a larger £800m package, a portion of which the government would guarantee. The talks then revolved round how Jaguar Land Rover could provide sufficient security — through its factories, plant and stock of cars — to allow the government and a group of banks, probably led by Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, to take part.

The former directors of MG Rover are pressing the government to release the results of an inquiry by the Financial Reporting Review Panel into the accounts of the collapsed carmaker.

The report was completed in 2005, but its publication was stopped while a separate government inquiry into MG Rover went ahead. As The Sunday Times revealed last week, publication of that report has now been stopped while the Serious Fraud Office investigates.

The directors will put their case at a Freedom of Information Tribunal to be held in Manchester next month.

From The Times Online

He was never a man to look backwards, to live in yesterday, endlessly reliving the great triumphs of the past. He was a forward-looking, innovative fellow. His cars of the 1950s and into the 1960s were cutting-edge and daring for their time.

That’s what Jaguar is trying to recapture.

“It’s about making Jaguars that are quintessentially Jaguars,” O’Driscoll said.

But this is a nervous business. Jaguar, now part of Tata’s integrated Jaguar Land Rover Group (JLR), is not swimming in dough. Far from it.

Tata Motors’ Indian business, which relies mostly on truck sales, made a profit for its last fiscal year, but the group as a whole was dragged into the red with a consolidated net loss of 25.1 billion rupees ($576-million). The problem was a 32-per-cent fall in sales volumes at Jaguar and Land Rover combined.

Land Rover has been the hardest hit by the global recession. Its sales fell 39 per cent to 120,000 units during the June, 2008, to March, 2009, period under Tata ownership. Jaguar sales fell only 4 per cent to 47,000 car.

But in the bad news there was something encouraging to be found. Jag’s XF mid-size sedan, launched last year, rescued the brand’s overall results. The car is a hit. And the design cues first shown in the XF are advanced much, much further in the new XJ. That has the Jag types feeling pretty hopeful.

They have some other cards to play, too. For nearly 20 years under Ford Motor Co. ownership, Jaguar was rebuilt entirely and that effort sucked up billions and billions of dollars. Ford had no choice. When the company arrived on the scene in 1989, Ford’s manufacturing experts were appalled. They said the only worse plants in the whole world were Lada factories in Moscow.

Ford’s investments never paid off in terms of profits for the Detroit auto maker, but they are a real asset for Tata. Jaguar’s plants are modern and efficient and they spin out some of the best-built cars in the world.

J.D. Power and Associates three-year Vehicle Dependability Study has Jaguar at the very top among brands, tied with Buick for the No. 1 spot.

That means that, in the latest study, Jag and Buick dethroned Lexus for the first time since the Japanese luxury brand has been a part of the survey. Alas, Land Rover is at the very bottom of that study.

Meanwhile, both Jag and Land Rover are baking in the types of features and designs that send owners swooning. In J.D. Power’s last APEAL study, released just last week, Jaguar was ranked second overall and Land Rover ninth.

The APEAL study, which stands for automotive performance execution and layout, is a so-called “things-gone-right” study. It asks owners to rank brands in terms of how pleased they are with their vehicles and the brand.

So Tata has something to work with here. But the Indian company and its British managers better work fast.

When Tata bought JLR last year from Ford for $2.3-billion (U.S.), most of the money was borrowed and that’s still the case today. JLR needs to make a success out of everything it does now; there is no margin for error.

At a recent press conference in India to announce the launch of JLR sales in Tata’s home market, Tata vice-chairman Ravi Kant predicted good things for JLR once new models like the XJ hit showrooms and this painful recession eases.

“We feel once we are able to get through this difficult and very, very challenging period, [JLR] has an extremely bright future,” Kant said. “The plans that have been made show that it will have a very good turnaround and it will be an extremely profitable company.”

Yet even as Kant was speaking, JLR was planning on finally ending production of the ill-conceived and poorly executed X-Type at the company’s Halewood plant in central England. The official announcement came last week, resulting in 300 jobs lost, on top of the more than 2,000 job cuts JLR has already made.

Those cuts, along with a proposed LRX “green” vehicle that has won a £27-million ($49-million Canadian) British government development grant, as well as a €340-million loan pledged by the European Investment Bank, are part of a package of moves being taken to keep JLR viable even as new models such as the 2010 XJ are developed and launched.

A lean JLR with sexy and desirable vehicles marketed in daring ways has given Ratan Tata the ammunition to defend the decision to take on billions in debt to buy the British brands.

“It was a terrific decision that we took to bid for these two brands and own them,” the chairman told reporters at a recent Nano event. “We are going through a downturn today that has unfortunately somewhat condemned Jaguar and Land Rover in perception, but that perception is very wrong.”

And perception is what the London party was absolutely all about. Jaguar will only succeed if it is perceived to be vibrant, not stuffy. The brand must be hip, not retro. The cars must be sleek and cool and daring, not understated and quietly elegant and utterly boring.

Ian Callum, the Scotsman who has been Jaguar’s design director for a decade, does suggest, however, that the new XJ is linked to the past, to the original XJ launched in 1968, a year before Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon.

“One of my greatest strengths, if I have any, is I understand the old XJ. You know what a beautiful car it is. You have to put that car in its place in 1968,” he said.

“It was a beautiful car and its proportions are fantastic. So logged in my mind is exactly what that car meant in 1968. I remember it so clearly. I learned a lot of my principles of design off that car.

“And being that familiar with it, knowing what made it so special, for me it was a very natural thing to do – to go into the 21st century and redo it, but in a 21st-century context. Not 1968 context. It was a very natural thing to do [the 2010 XJ].”

Jaguar and its partner Land Rover are hoping buyers will naturally gravitate to the new take on a storied brand.