2014 Jaguar F-Type

You've probably never seen a new Jaguar sportscar at your local showroom. I'm 36, and it hasn't happened in my lifetime... and not by a little bit. Oh, there have been a string of XK coupes and convertibles, and as of late, there have even been some genuine high-performance specials – namely the R, R-S and R-S GTmodels – but their basis has always been the 2+2 grand tourer shell, not a lighter and smaller footprint with more intrinsic sporting intent. The truth is that it's been a half-century since Jaguar introduced a proper new sportscar. Today, most people know the brand strictly as a purveyor of wood- and hide-lined luxury sedans.

In fact, if you're not an enthusiast with some appreciation for the marque's history, it's a bit odd to hear Jaguar executives proclaim that they are a sportscar company and always have been. By their reckoning, the 2014 F-Type seen here is in fact a return to form, a Rip Van Winkled brand pillar reanimated and reimagined to take center stage. It's a sentiment that must be particularly odd for car shoppers in developing markets like China, where Jaguar hasn't even been selling cars for very long. Yet because the original 1961 E-Type is perhaps the most gorgeous car ever to lay ply on the world's roads, we're prepared to cut them some slack.
Given a desire to project its lengthy and distinguished (if distant) sportscar history into the present, we couldn't really have blamed Jaguar if they decided to just update the E-Type's visuals and pull what's underneath into modernity, à la Ford GT. (In fact, there's already a well-respected British outfit, Eagle, commanding big dollars for doing largely the same thing). There's also a middle 'homage' path – think 1956 BMW 507 begets 2000 Z8 roadster. Yet Jaguar hasn't taken the easy way out and created a doppelganger or even a historical pastiche. Yes, if you look hard enough, you'll find subtle nods to the E-Type, but they aren't immediately obvious. In fact, Jaguar has embarked on nothing short of a radical design overhaul of its entire lineup over the last half-decade or so (beginning with 2008's XF sedan) in an effort to upend its image as traditional luxury transport for the world's elderly elite.

n the metal, the F-Type is nothing short of stunning. That's particularly impressive in light of something Jaguar design boss Ian Callum confided to us: Droptops are a lot more challenging to work out than their fixed-head counterparts. "Convertibles are inherently more difficult to give drama... it's basically a straight line with a hole in it." Despite the tougher design brief, our time crawling around each variant (V6, V6 S, and V8 S), along with countless admiring looks on our drive through the Northern Spanish countryside, suggests that Jaguar has more than nailed it.
The F-Type's face is dominated by a pair of vertically oriented bi-xenon headlamps (Easter Egg: their chromed innards were influenced by the Star Wars Tie Fighter – the result is far less hokey than it sounds) along with a large, rectangular grille opening with softened corners bookended by a set of aggressive air intakes. Callum says the design team originally penned the car with an oval grille like that of the original E-Type, "but it looked old," so they started over.

The tail section is arguably the F-Type's best and most distinctive design attribute, with a low, tapered shape accented by a narrow band of taillamps that subtly recall those of the E-Type. Unusually, the latter feature places more lens on the side of the car than facing rearward. Aerodynamicists will tell you that artfully pointed tails like this may look great, but they wreak havoc with a car's high-speed stability, so the F-Type features a deployable active rear wing that keeps the rump's lines unspoiled. Overall, you really have to look underhood to find a missed opportunity design-wise. The engine bay is sadly nondescript, with the powerplant covered in a massive black shroud.


The F-Type's interior is essentially a clean-sheet proposition, with an appropriately driver-centric focus. You sit low, with the doorsills up around your shoulder (but not too much) and the windshield header isn't intrusive whether the top is open or closed. Straight ahead is a three-spoke wheel with a small airbag and simpler button array than on other Jaguars. Available with both heat and a grippy faux suede finish, it's just the right thickness. A pair of wheel-mounted paddle shifters also peek out from behind the helm on all models. That's right, there's no manual gearbox available, only a ZF eight-speed automatic. Stifle your guffaws for a moment – we'll get to the transmission situation momentarily.

Jaguar's cabins are not without theater these days – the XF's rolling motorized air vents, for instance. The F-Type carries on that tradition with active center air vents that emerge from atop the center stack when the climate control system's brain deems it necessary, disappearing when parked or when the system doesn't need them to maintain the correct temperature. Callum says the vents were critical to maintaining the sports-car-correct low dashboard, but they still strike us as a bit of well-meaning hokum. When deployed, the vents really don't add much visual height and the motorized assembly adds weight, complexity and cost for what amounts to a party trick. We like the simple three-dial temperature control knob array better, with their clever integrated displays and seat heater operations. The latter keep usage of the touchscreen infotainment system to a minimum, which is a bonus, because it's the same dim-witted Denso system that causes headaches in other Jaguars.

The ZF eight-speed automatic does its best twin-clutch imitation, with quick, firm shifts under hard acceleration and a willingness to hold gears at redline when in Sport mode. It might give up a few hundredths in reaction time to something like Porsche's PDK, but under most circumstances it's hardly noticeable, and it offers more refined full automatic operation, particularly at low speeds. We only had a couple of occasions where the silicon chippery thought it was smarter than we were on paddleshift requests, and it was probably right. Good as it is, we'd still appreciate if Jaguar finds a way to put a manual gearbox option on the order sheet. It might be lower-tech and slower, but the added degree of interaction would be a welcome and appropriate choice for a full-range sportscar.

What we'd actually like to see is a more basic model based on the V6 S with equipment levels akin to what the Boxster starts off with – no nav, manual seats, and so on, with a price and curb weight reflective of the decontenting. Doing so would reinforce the F-Type's credentials as a true sportscar and minimize its GT undertones. If that's too much to ask of the roadster, we'd particularly like to see this strategy adopted with the eventual fixed-head coupe model that will be a bit harder-core by definition. The latter, by the way, is a model that Jaguar officials steadfastly refuse to confirm even as they can't help but wink and flash a wry smile.

Yet even without the coupe, there's real reason to celebrate here – we don't often see new nameplates enter this segment, and fortunately, the F-Type is damned good. We're enjoying a golden age of sorts for high-performance roadsters, just a couple of decades after the genre went all but extinct. Figuring out which one you want isn't like picking an acupuncturist out of the phone book – there's almost no risk, as there isn't a bad one in the bunch. Each of the segment's players offer compelling reasons to buy... but some of them, like this F-Type, offer a few more than most.

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