DRIVING IMPRESSION: Claas’ range-topping Jaguar 900-series foragers are to receive a raft of updates for 2017. We take a closer look at what’s changed and what it all means for the operator…
It was June 1973 that the Claas forage harvester production line spat out its first self-propelled Jaguar. Over four decades later the flagship machines in the line-up bear very little resemblance to those first Jaguar 60 SFs with their 120hp Perkins engines.
While the changes have been pretty radical over that time, it’s been a gradual evolution with small updates year-on-year. 2017 will be no different, with the German manufacturer’s biggest two choppers getting a number of new features. That’s significant because around 40% of Jaguars sold within the UK are 900-series machines (rather than 800s) and over half of those are range-topping 970s and 980s (for the geeks they also get a new model designation — Type 498). These biggest two models retain the V8 and V12 MAN engines employed before and, being 775hp and 884hp respectively, they still fall above the 700hp barrier for the latest emissions regulations. That means no AdBlue and no complicated exhaust gas recirculation systems.
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