The F is for fantastic
What Is It?
Below the belt line, just about everything is the same as the convertible. Powertrains are identical: the 3.0-liter supercharged V6 can be tuned to either 335 hp in the base model or 375 hp in the S, while a 543-hp supercharged 5.0-liter V8 powers the R Coupe. All engines are mated to quick-shifting eight-speed ZF automatics.
What's It Like To Drive?
The F-Type Coupe is quicker around the Nurburgring than the once-mighty XJ220. That's right – the V8-powered F-Type R Coupe lapped the Grune Hoelle in 7:39, a full six seconds better than the XJ220, making it the fastest production Jaguar ever.
For our part, we did not lap the Nurburgring but rather the somewhat lesser- (or un-) known 3.3-mile Motorland Aragon in southern Spain. The new track -- built in 2009 -- has a couple things in common with the 'Ring: blind crests and semi-hard-to-see-through corners here and there, but it's generally safer and faster to maneuver through for the average non-superstar Ring Meister. We lapped it with Jaguar Driving Academy instructor-to-the-stars Chris Dredge riding shotgun and pointing out helpful tips that would keep the $99,925 car off the guardrail and between the curbs.
Our ride was the F-Type R Coupe. You'd be hard-pressed to find a faster, better-looking or more comfortable beast in which to fly. The R's adaptive damping tuning is set up to work in tandem with the model's revised spring rates. Specifically, the R's springs are 4.3 percent stiffer in front and 3.7 percent in the rear. You can further personalize your car through the My Dynamics setup on the center screen.
On the outside the F-Type Coupe looks aggressively muscular. Jaguar execs kept using the word "haunches" to describe the car's rear fender humps, and we'd have to agree that the rear three-quarter view certainly showed off the beast's muscly exterior best. From certain angles, you could see some E-Type in the profile. From the behind, the tailing roof vectored down to the rear wing nestled in between the fender flares to hint at a positively powerful performer.
Earlier we'd driven an R Coupe around an ancillary road course with sprinklers watering the track to show us how the TVbB pulled the car around corners. In that environment, countering our instincts to slow down in the rain, the result was merely weird as the TVbB tugged the car to the inside of the turns and minimized but did not eliminate understeer.
On the bigger, far more wide-open Motorland circuit, the F-Type R Coupe really came into its element. A big roar from the quad-tipped exhausts announced our exit from the pits as we used the easy and quick paddle shifters to change up the gears. The shifter is superb, by the way -- so quick and so smooth. Jaguar officially lists 0-60 for the R Coupe at 4.0 seconds but one guy on hand said, "We're so @#$%^&*+ conservative that it's probably a half a second faster." Could be. It's quick.
The problem with new technology like TVbB and the new LSD is that at first you start driving as if it's not there. It takes a while to get used to it and a while longer to rely on it. At one point, overcooking it into a sharp left-hander, which we entered too fast because we were taking it too easy on the carbon ceramic brakes and weren't yet fully believing how fade-proof they were, we got to try out the TVbB. It did, indeed, pull the car around to the left a little better than we might have pulled it ourselves without the brakes on the inside wheels helping and – swoosh – we were into and through the corner quicker.
Generally, turn-in was smooth and quick, and while we were still able to make the car plow a little, it was definitely less plowsome than it might have been without TVbB, we assume. We left the traction and stability control on for our drive on the big track but did manage to feel a little slip exiting corners. Switch that stuff off and you can drift your F-Type around the entire Formula D calendar.
Very early on in our track session we asked instructor Dredge to switch the steering and throttle response back to normal, since the quicker setting was way too jittery. The car was much easier to pilot after that and ultimately, Dredge said, ours was the fastest time he'd recorded, so we must have been doing something right. Or the F-Type was doing something right.
The most enjoyable on-track activity was definitely hauling down the long straight on the back end, where we got all the way up to sixth gear before tromping on the binders. All ceramic discs on the F-Types are dyno tested and bedded before they release them to customers, so you can trust them to do their job.
But how many Jag buyers are going to take these to a racetrack? True, the Monticello Motorsports Club has some F-Type convertibles, and we certainly hope some drivers will do a track day or two. But most won't. So in addition to our afternoon at Motorland, we got to drive F-Type S and R Coupes for two days on real, live, very narrow Spanish back country two-lanes. Some were one-lanes. Again, the best part was full-on straight-ahead throttle wailing when passing various Seat hatchbacks. It probably terrified the locals, but we always did it on long, safe straights and gave them plenty of room. Nonetheless, the sound of a howling supercharged V8 suddenly popping up in your aural spectrum had to strike fear into some corazons. Con permiso, amigos.
We started out with the F-Type S and, as with the convertible, we never felt it lacked for power. The V8 was king, of course, but you could have either a base model or an S and never want for power in either one.
There were a couple things we'd have done differently. There was a lot of road noise transmitted into the cabin, especially in the passenger's seat. The seat backs hit the rear wall too soon. We tried tilting the seat cushion down in back and up in front but it made the whole seat creep forward. Same problem occurred in the convertible F-Type. The best position was to just slide the whole seat farther forward and then try to get comfortable. Probably a result of your author's freakishly long torso. Most normal human bodies will not have this problem.
Do I Want It?
You want a lot of things, and this is certainly one of them. While Jag lists some cross-shopped coupes, including the Boxster, Cayman, Corvette, SL and R8, we can't imagine Jag buyers would look too much around. They want their leaping cats. But Jaguar also says the majority of buyers will come from other brands.
We can't really blame them.
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