Less than one year in, and it's time to
get excited over the Jaguar F-Type all over again. What we have here is the new
Coupe body. If that's not enough, we've also got the R badge. With that, the
supercharged 5.0-litre engine is cranked up to 542bhp, as opposed to the 488bhp
of the far-from-unexciting V8S Convertible.
But first, let's just look at it. We all
know the Convertible is a shapely article to begin with. But the Coupe has even
more to offer, because the designers' canvas extends above the waistline.Best UK Used Cars And
they made the most this extra scope for their artistry.
The roof arches over to a hatchback with a
sharply tapering window. The side glass isn't just a bare triangle but has an
upward kink that emphasises the sweep of the wheel-arches. Best of all, the
whole cabin narrows to give a deep and meaningful rear haunch.The tail slopes higher than the
Convertible's horizontal boot lid, and there's no need to make space for the
folded soft top. This means this is the first F-Type that doesn't demand you
send your spare underpants ahead by courier. The boot isn't big but it's
perfectly OK, with a useful extra bin beneath the flat floor too.Never mind your bags, what about you? Well
the cabin is nice and snug, but there's enough headroom, and the pillar-less
design means you can see back over your shoulder at junctions.
The silhouette is largely clean of obvious
aero trickery, but at 70mph a spoiler pops up from the trailing edge of the
rear screen. There's no positive downforce, but it kills any lift.The hard roof makes the car nearly twice
as rigid, though the cloth-roof version is hardly soggy. The windscreen pillar
and side rail is a very clever single-piece hydroformed extrusion. Even so,
it's not obvious why this all-aluminium two-seater is 200kg heavier than a
steel-and-aluminium 2+2 911.Don't be fooled by the stickers saying
this is a prototype. The engineers say it drives like the final thing. All that
seemed to be awaiting a last fettle was the boot carpet.
As it sits in the pit-lane of a dry
racetrack, with my name on it, I'm prepared to overlook the boot carpet.
Straight out of the traps, there's a
different quality to the sound versus the bombastic V8 roadster. Because the
rear screen would reflect rear-tyre and exhaust noise right to your ears, the
engineers had to be careful to staunch the volume more. So there's extra
padding, and the exhaust doesn't open its noisy-flaps until higher up the revs.
Result is, when you're driving with some moderation, the car is a little more
civilised. But.But crank it up and here comes the
familiar brutal V8 howl, and the spitting on the over-run as you pull the down
paddle and it chews through the ratios.
The R's extra power doesn't make the
engine feel peaky. That's because it comes with extra mid-range torque too. So
you've basically got a car that's scalded-cat fast from about 3000rpm upwards.
It does 0-62 in 4.2 sec, and that's definitely traction-limited. Point of fact,
it's often better to go round corners a gear higher than you expected, making
it easier to keep the tyres on the right side of traction. High revs plus low
gears generally means wheelspin.That said, Best UK Used Cars the Coupe seems more benign
than the Roadster. They've recalibrated the rear e-diff and the adaptive
dampers (same hardware, new calibrations). The springs are very slightly
stiffer, to take advantage of the new body stiffness. The car isn't supposed to
ride any more firmly (we'll have to get it on the road rather than track to
find out) but there's better traction. At the limit, you can ease the tail out.
Under the same circumstances, the V8S roadster tends to zap out like a
flick-knife.
The R Coupe turns in slightly more
faithfully too, by gently brushing its inside brake for a torque-vectoring
effect. Have to say I didn't notice. But I did get more steering feel
mid-corner than I remember from the convertible. Maybe that's the stiffer body
allowing better precision and feedback - it's the sort of thing lap times don't
measure but humans feel. And adore. The whole car feels sharp and adjustable
and confident - more so than the Roadster, and that beat a 911 cabrio when we
had them together.Jaguar has lined up with the opposition
and is now offering carbon-ceramic brakes. The iron ones might have been
getting tired after a morning on the track, but they still seemed to be doing
the job. Then I switched to a carbon-braked car and at the end of the first
straight I had to accelerate again before the corner because they'd pulled up
so soon. So the carbon jobs are the smart choice if you drive your F-Type at
tracks (probably few do) or down mountain passes (maybe more).
The R gets standard race seats and other
spec goodies that are optional elsewhere on the range, so it's the dearest F at
£85,000. That's the same as the 911 Carrera S PDK. Which has 100bhp less.For the F-Type V6 and V6S, the Coupes are
cheaper than the Roadsters. So the lovely 380bhp V6S Coupe is about the price
most people pay for a mildly optioned Cayman S. People once said the F-Type was
expensive. This might shut them up.
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