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"Cold For Cats" - Jaguar XJ drives to the coldest town on earth
14th January 2013
Two standard Jaguar XJ All-Wheel Drives have returned successfully from a 2000-mile round trip journey to the coldest city on earth.
On December 19th, thermometers in Dawson City recorded -49ºC (-56F), reportedly making the gold-rush town in Canada's Yukon Territory the coldest town on the planet - so cold in fact that if you threw a cup of hot water in the air, it instantly turned into a mini blizzard, freezing before it hit the ground.
Perhaps the greatest North American drive in the depths of winter, the aim of the journey was to drive from the Yukon capital Whitehorse (1800 miles north of Vancouver, BC) to a point of perpetual sunset in the shortest daylight week of the year.
The cars employed for the epic adventure were a pair of Jaguar's recently launched AWD models, powered by the new 340PS 3.0-litre V6 supercharged petrol engine.
Jaguar Global Brand Director Adrian Hallmark said: "The cars excelled in conditions way beyond limits likely to be experienced even by owners in North America and cold weather climates such as Russia. Deep snow, sheet ice, gravel and rutted frozen mud were underfoot the whole way. With this capability our XF and XJ saloons are perfect for the North American winter."
The XJ AWD's adventure has been captured in a film released today to coincide with the opening of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
The film follows the expedition into the Arctic Circle. Starting at Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon and an important point of the Alaska Highway, the cars followed the mighty Yukon River north to Dawson City, scene of the gold rush in the 1890's. Dawson is located at the bottom end of the Dempster Highway, domain of the Ice Road Truckers, which runs past the Arctic Circle to the town of Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.