The 2024 Jaguar F-Type.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
There are many tunnels through the mountains on the road across northern Spain. That’s where the Jaguar F-Type really proves itself – where the sound and fury of the V8 engine roars around the rock walls to remind you of the glory of internal combustion. This is what my dad dreamed of, and maybe my mom too. My kids call it noise pollution.
The car I’m driving is the last sports car model Jaguar will ever make that’s powered by gasoline. I left Barcelona the day before to rip through the Pyrenees from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean on an iconic road trip for an iconic sportster, the successor to the XK and E-Type. This morning, I swapped the 575-horsepower coupe I drove the first day for a 444-horsepower convertible, and the top’s down to hear the crackle of those eight cylinders. God, I’ll miss this.
It’s been a fight for Jaguar to get to this point and it still is a fight. The British car maker builds lovely cars but they’re plagued by questionable reliability, and by almost overwhelming competition from the Germans and pretty much everyone else. Why take a chance on an F-Type when you can drive a Porsche Boxster, or pay just a bit more for a Porsche 911? Why choose an F-Pace when you know what you’re getting with a BMW X5?
Jaguar has a solution for all this – increase the prices.
“We’re moving to a modern luxury future,” says Ken McConomy. He’s the head of global public relations for Jaguar Land Rover Ltd., and one of the few people to have seen sketches of the company’s future products. “Right now, the average selling price in the U.K. (for Jaguar vehicles) is about £60,000-to-£70,000 ($102,000-$120,000). Moving forward, we’ll be £100,000 ($172,000). We’re moving the competitive set up.”
That’s Bentley and fully-loaded-German territory. It’s a big hike from the $100,000-plus of the current F-Type.
To justify it, McConomy says, “look at (the success of) Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Other people are doing it.”
“The product” is still a well-kept secret, but it is known that it will be fully electric, because JLR is committed to an all-electric future. It will be built on a dedicated, in-house platform called Panthera and it probably won’t be an SUV.
The F-Type has subtle badging to serve as a reminder that it shares a heritage with the original XK120 of 1948.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
“We have sister brands and they have some fantastic SUVs,” says McConomy, referring to JLR’s Range Rovers and Land Rovers, “so part of our strategy going forward is that we’re not going to compete with ourselves. We’re not going to go after SUVs – that’s a space that belongs to them.”
So what will take the place of this glorious F-Type, with its Quickshift transmission that punches the car so swiftly through the eight gears, and its choice of supercharged five-litre engines? The two examples I’m driving are the 75th Anniversary special, the only F-Type to be sold in its final year, with exclusive wheels and green paint, and subtle badging to remind you they share a heritage with the original XK120 of 1948. Back then, the aluminum-on-wood XK was the world’s fastest production car, capable of 193 kilometres an hour.
This convertible tops out at 285 and will sprint to 100 kilometres an hour in 4.6 seconds. The more powerful “R” engine has an electronically limited top speed 15 kilometres an hour above that, and will cover the same sprint in 3.7 seconds. Both engines are available as either convertibles or coupes and with all-wheel drive.
This convertible tops out at 285 and will sprint to 100 kilometres an hour in 4.6 seconds.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The numbers will be different for the replacement electric car and it will probably be even quicker, given its higher price. It may well be a taller crossover, as Ford has evolved the Mustang, or it may begin as a sleek and emotional sports car – a clear successor to the long and low F-Type. The general belief is that Jaguar will introduce three new EVs, one each year that will first be shown later in 2024, though whether they’ll be distinct models or variations of each other is not something McConomy will discuss.
“What I’ll say is that Gerry McGovern (chief creative officer of JLR) reimagined the icon of Defender,” says McConomy, remembering the recent redesign of the iconic Land Rover. “People questioned how we would do it, and whether we were wise. What he did, and his team did, with Defender, is what we will do with Jaguar. People will look at it differently but they’ll still recognize it as a Jaguar.”
For now, we’ll have to take his word for it. At least we have this lovely sports car as a memory of the last 75 years.
“I used to have an amazing picture of an E-Type on my wall as a kid, and I thought, one day, maybe,” says Andy Jones, the F-Type’s vehicle integration engineer, who now works on the Defender. “I loved the car, and to work on the evolution of that, the F-Type, was a dream.”
Jones says he can take credit for helping to design the punchy feel of the transmission when it’s under load, and for tweaking the exhaust system. This 75th Anniversary car also has a few upgrades to its suspension that are intended to make the steering feel more responsive: redesigned upper ball joints, larger wheel bearings and new lightweight rear knuckles. They’re combined with adaptive dampers and an electronic active differential on the rear axle, which help keep everything under control while tossing the car around the corners. It’s still not as flickable as a Porsche 911 or a Boxster, but it seems every bit as quick.
Perhaps this generation’s teenagers might have a poster on their walls that show the F-Type with all its seductive allure, maybe slicing through a Spanish canyon as I did or cresting a mountain. I might even print out one of my photos and keep it beside my desk for a while. For sure, I’ll keep one of the videos that has the V8 roaring through a tunnel.
For all the teasing of McGovern’s still-unrevealed design, however, which is supposed to be “like no other, a copy of nothing,” I can’t see myself doing that for whatever becomes its electric successor – maybe my kids will.
The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.
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Mark Richardson