The best-looking Jaguar for decades; ripper supercharged V6; superstar driving dynamics
You’re kidding – no reversing camera at this price?
Obviously the Jaguar F-TYPE S coupe is very, very fast – a top speed of 275km/h to be exact. But we like Jaguar’s astonishing coupe best when it’s parked…so you can thoroughly absorb what is without doubt one of the most evocative automotive designs of the current era.
A nod to the revered E-Type Jaguar E-Type Jaguar from the 1960s? Maybe, maybe not.
What we do know is the F-TYPE coupe is a car many inside the famous walls at Brown’s Lane in Coventry, England have wanted to create for a long time. The excellence of the F-Type in every minute centimeter is testimony to their patience and diligence.
It’s easy to get carried-away with the hyperbole when considering cars like the Jaguar F-Type coupe but here’s just one justification. The dramatically sculptured body sides are in fact single-piece aluminium pressings – Jaguar says they are the most extreme cold-formed aluminium body side outer panels the automotive industry has seen.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe Overview
Jaguar handed www.carshowroom.com.au the keys to a Jaguar F-TYPE S coupe. Powered by an up-rated version of the supercharged V6 engine, the ‘S’ is the mid-grade coupe and it will set you back $152,300.
Over the entry-level F-TYPE coupe, the ‘S’ adds extras including ‘Dynamic Launch’, ‘Active Sports’ exhaust, sports suspension with ‘Active Dynamics’, high-performance brakes (380mm front/325mm rear rotors), a mechanical limited slip differential and 19-inch alloy wheels.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe Engine
Over the entry-level F-TYPE Coupe, the F-TYPE S steps up with punchier version of the supercharged 3.0-litre V6 engine. Maximum power is 280kW at 6500rpm and peak torque of 460Nm is delivered between 3500rpm and 5000rpm.
Drive is to the rear wheels via the ZF eight-speed automatic transmission with steering wheel paddle-shifters.
Zero to 100km/h requires just 4.9 seconds and combined-cycle fuel consumption is rated at 9.1l/100kms.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe The Interior
There’s no mistaking the Jaguar F-TYPE S as anything other than a fair-dinkum sports car when you open the door and lower yourself inside (and we do mean ‘lower’). You sit low with the perfectly-sized three-spoke leather-wrapped steering wheel just right thanks to lots of rake/reach adjustment and six-way power seat adjustment.
The sports seats are trimmed with leather facings and Suedecloth sides. Ahead is the excellent twin-dial instrument panel with a five-inch colour TFT screen and gorgeous graphics.
And to the left is a thick centre console with the usual Jaguar-Land Rover switch gear and gear lever plus a sporty leather-trimmed ‘grab handle’ for the passenger. Audio is a 380W Meridian system with an eight-inch colour touch screen which doubles as the satellite navigation display.
Included in its extra features over the entry-grade coupe, the ‘S’ picks-up dual colour configurable ambient interior lighting. This was ‘so-so’ for your Car Showroom correspondent but provided endless fascination for the Car Showroom juniors and friends who rode in the left-hand seat.
The cargo space is long but -thanks to that wonderful rear-end styling – it is shallow – but hey, this is a sports car after-all. Looking at it another way…our full-size golf bag fitted into the boot of the Jaguar F-TYPE (capacity 407-litres) and at the golf club car-park we were out and long gone towards the first tee before our mate in his Porsche 911 extricated his golfing appliances from various regions in his car and re-assembled everything.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe Exterior & Styling
Jaguar Design Director Ian Callum is regarded as one of the benchmark car designers of the current era – in fact he was recently awarded the prestigious Minerva medal from the British Chartered Society of Design Directors for his outstanding contribution to automotive design. He’s also an affable bloke, a genuine car enthusiast who seems to enjoy the candor of Australian motoring journalists over a glass or two of top-notch beverages.
Your www.carshowroom.com.au correspondent had a ‘sit-down’ with Ian at the Frankfurt Motor Show a few years back. Not that we knew it then, but the F-TYPE would have been on the drawing boards at that time…we should have guessed because Ian spent most of the night canvassing our views about sports cars and Jaguar’s history in that most revered market segment.
As we now know, the production Jaguar F-TYPE closely follows the C-X16 concept car and Ian says the Coupe’s long bonnet, low roofline and tapering cabin still provide inspiration for him.
“Creating a sports coupe is the purest of design tasks, and also the most challenging; get it right and aesthetically the result will be as dynamic as the car should be rewarding to drive,” Ian said. “I believe we got it right.”
Yep, we’ll concur on that one - in fact, viewed from the rear, we reckon the Jaguar F-TYPE Coupe is on-par with the Ferrari 458 Italia and Lamborghini Hurucan as being the most gorgeously styled sports cars currently on the market. It’s simply astonishing – the angles, the curves, the lights and that gorgeous deployable rear spoiler brilliantly concealed within the tapered shutline.
Right from the twin ‘shark gill’ opening either side of the grille, through the LED ‘J Blade’ DRLs the Jaguar F-TYPE coupe is one of the most dramatic designs we’ve seen for a long time. That’s even more remarkable given its relatively high production volume compared to other specialist sports car manufacturers.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe On The Road
In the week the Jaguar F-TYPE S was in the www.carshowroom.com.au garage, on most drives our fingers reached for the drive mode toggle-switch and flicked it to the ‘Dynamic’ setting to enjoy the sportier settings and that hallmark F-TYPE exhaust burble on gear-changes and over-run. Naturally in the suburbs you don’t need the firmer suspension but just hearing that exhaust note brought a smile – and let everyone know this wasn’t a Jag from the XJ end of the range!
Over the twisty stuff the F-TYPE came to life in the same way we recall its convertible sibling did – the transformation from a nice luxury coupe to a red-hot sports car could hardly have been more pronounced. Ride on the 19-inch alloy wheels was firm and there was a crispness about turn-in which bordered on remarkable.
Mid-turn the Jaguar F-TYPE S takes a ‘set’ like all good sports cars and the responsiveness of the supercharged V6 combined with ‘friendly’ ESC tune in ‘Dynamic’ allowed for excellent throttle balance. And the minimal roll showed Jaguar engineers have body control nailed.
Reactions from the steering wheel paddle shifters were nicely rapid and while all three Jaguar F-TYPE models share identical ratios in the eight-speeder, each has a unique final drive ratio. So it was easy to ensure our F-TYPE S test car was in the correct gear for every situation.
Like any sports car there were compromises when we took the Jaguar F-TYPE S into the city. The view in the internal rear-vision mirror wasn’t great – that rear window is tiny and angled – and at 4470mm in length (with a long bonnet) and 1923mm in width (excluding the exterior mirrors)…well let’s just say parking (taking care not to ‘curb’ those 19-inch alloys) and negotiating the peak hour rush were testing.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe Issues
The reversing camera is in a $1,725 optional ‘Parking Pack’ – curious for a $152,300 premium sports car when some sub-$30,000 sedans/hatchbacks have a camera as standard.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe Verdict
Yep, the spirit of the E-Type returns four decades on – modernized, supercharged but oh so Jaguar. Sure the E-Type was a phenomenal race car (Sir Jackie Stewart raced one in the 60’s) but the road-going versions – like the F-TYPE – managed to successfully blend genuine luxury with those unquestioned sports car attributes.
And really that’s the ace card of the Jaguar F-TYPE – it’s a very capable sports car but has that unmistakable Jaguar look and feel inside. It’s the solution for those who covet a sports car but find many rivals too closely aligned with race cars and thus lean inside.
But don’t for a second think the Jaguar F-TYPE short-changes when the road gets curvy. Quite the opposite really – dial-up ‘Dynamic’ and the Big Cat is fast, agile and very rewarding. We’d have one in a heartbeat and if we did we’d ensure parking in our garage was such that every time you walked in you scored an eyeful of that stunning rear-end styling.
Jaguar F-TYPE S Coupe The Competition
Comparisons get tricky at this end of town, but here’s a few we’d have on our list…
Audi RS5 Coupe is priced at $155,900 and of course drives its 331kW/430Nm V8 via a seven-speed transmission and Audi’s Quattro all-wheel-drive system. The stonking Audi Coupe while not a two-seater like the Jag, covers zero to 100km/h in exactly the same time (4.9 seconds).
Mercedes-Benz is in the frame with the gorgeous SLK55 AMG ($157,850). It’s quicker than the Jag (zero to 100km/h in 4.6 seconds) and outpunches with 310kW/540Nm from the Merc-AMG 5.5-litre V8. AMG interiors are the benchmark others aspire to.
