Top Cat

YOU KNOW you’re suffering from horsepower-war battle fatigue when your first reaction to the news that the Jaguar XFR’s all-new, supercharged 5.0-liter direct injection V-8 develops 510 horsepower is a faintly disappointed “Oh…”

It might outgun the 500-horse BMW M5 and the 507-horse Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, but it comes up shor t against Cadillac’s mighty 556-horsepower CTS-V and Audi’s head-banging 572-horse RS6. We’re here to tell you, however, that sheer horsepower ain’t everything. Just point the new XFR at your favorite stretch of gnarly two-lane, nail the gas, and you’ll soon see what we mean.

The XFR is, of course, the new flagship car in an upgraded and expanded XF range for the 2010 model year. By now, you will have noticed the entirely predictable exterior mods: a new front bumper fascia with large air intakes, deeper sills, a vented hood, new 20-inch alloy wheels, and quad tailpipes. Inside, the XFR retains the XF’s cool and charismatic interior design, though Dark Oak veneer is the standard wood trim, complementing a unique dark meshaluminum dash panel. The XFR’s front seats feature electrically adjustable bolsters for greater side support.

The big news is all under the skin: suspension tweaks that include magnetorheological shocks, bigger brakes, an active differential, and the supercharged version of the all-new AJ-V-8 Gen III engine.

The 5.0-liter Gen III has been designed in-house at Jaguar. The new engine is almost an inch shorter than the current 4.2-liter V-8, thanks to the relocation of the oil pump. The aluminum block is now a high-pressure diecast item with cross-bolted main bearing caps. The four-valve cylinder heads are made from recycled aluminum, and the camshafts feature variable valve timing activated by the torque motions of the valves themselves instead of oil pressure, enabling the oil pump to be reduced in size. The engine features what Jaguar claims is an industry-first direct-injection system with centrally mounted, multihole, spray-guided injectors.

In naturally aspirated form, the new 5.0-liter develops 385 horsepower at 6500 rpm and 380 pound-feet at 3500 rpm, a useful 23-percent increase in power and 12-percent increase in torque over the naturally aspirated 4.2, which will continue as the entry-level XF powertrain here in the U.S. The supercharged version features a Roots-type twin-vortex system blower with dual intercoolers and delivers those 510 horses from 6000 to 6500 rpm, while max torque is 461pound-feet from 2500 rpm to 5500 rpm, 21- and 11-percent increases over the supercharged 4.2. Jaguar claims the XFR will sprint from 0-to-60 mph in 4.7 seconds and nail the standing quarter in 13.1 seconds.

On paper, the XFR is a few ticks slower than all its major rivals. On the road, however, it’s a different story. Where the RS6 and E63 are tightly wound, join-the-dots cars that sprint to the apex of a turn with a ferocious burst of power, but need to be settled, turned, and aimed before you pull the trigger and sprint to the next apex, the loose-limbed XFR sashays through the turns with the grace of a big cat running down a fast-moving gazelle.

Crisp turn-in is helped by steering that’s 10 percent quicker than the standard XF’s— yet still retains its lovely, delicate feel—and the new, electronically controlled active differential, which can vary its locking

Jaguar dealers will soon start taking orders for the XFR. Base sticker is expected to be around $80,000. That undercuts both M5 and E63 by $8000 to $15,000, though it’s about $20,000 more than the CTS-V. The Germans have pretty much ruled this par ticular segment for a couple decades now. But first America, and now Britain, have delivered worthy challengers to the established order. If that seems a comparison worth doing, you’re right. We’ll be rounding up all four (the RS6, sad to say, remains a Europe-only model for now) and putting them to the test as soon as we can. Stay tuned. ■

2009 JAGUAR XFR

B A S E P R I C E $ 8 0 , 0 0 0 V E H I C L E L AYO U T F r o n t e n g i n e , R W D , 5 - p a s s , 4 - d o o r s e d a n E N G I N E 5 . 0 L / 5 1 0 - h p /4 6 1 - l b - f t , D O H C , 3 2 - v a l v e V- 8 T R A N S M I S S I O N 6 - s p e e d a u t o m a t i c C U R B W E I G H T 4 1 6 9 l b W H E E L B A S E 1 1 4 . 5 i n L E N G T H x W I D T H x H E I G H T 1 9 5 . 3 x 7 3 . 9 x 5 7. 5 i n 0 - 6 0 M P H 4 . 7 s e c ( m f r ) E PA C I T Y/ H W Y F U E L E CO N 1 5 / 2 1 m p g CO 2 E M I S S I O N S 1 . 0 3 l b /m i l e O N S A L E I N U . S . C u r r e n t l y

MASTER CLASS

WE RIDE WITH JAGUAR’S CHASSIS GURU, MIKE CROSS

IF JAGUAR VEHICLE integrity manager Mike Cross were any more relaxed, he’d be asleep. He slouches in the driver’s seat, talking quietly, slow hands caressing the steering wheel. But appearances are deceptive. We’re sprinting across the wriggling, heaving roads of northern Wales in the new Jaguar XFR, nipping apexes and dodging around rock walls, Cross’s eyes laser-locked on the road ahead.

Cross is our kind of car guy: fast and neat on the road, race-quick on the track, and with the ability to make any reardrive car corner in a lurid tire-smoking drift when he feels like it. Yet his cars are anything but the rock-hard, kidneyrattling rides you can sometimes get from enthusiast engineers. Here’s why.

Jaguar has a lot of targets and metrics that enable engineers to get close to the right chassis setup straight out of the box. “But the fi nal polish is still done subjectively,” Cross says. And north Wales is his personal chassis-calibration laboratory. Only a couple hours west of Jaguar’s engineering center at Whitley, the gnarly Welsh tarmac gives Cross all the feedback he needs to evaluate a vehicle. “If a car works well here,” he says, “it generally works well everywhere.”

What does he look for?

First, steering response: “It must be immediate, but the car should never feel nervous.” Over the years, Cross has found careful attention to the rear axle—spring and shock rates, tire selection—helps the front end work better. The active differential in the XFR is a further tool in the arsenal: “When the diff is open [unlocked], it’s good for steering response,” he says.

Second, ride: “I want a relaxed rolling feel,” he explains, “but you always need reserves of control.” Jaguar pays close attention to controlling the roll rate of the suspension, even when the car is traveling in a straight line. The idea, says Cross, is to reduce what ride and handling engineers call “head toss,” the side-toside pitching of your head that occurs when your car rides over bumps on alternate sides. Third, linearity: “The car should always feel entirely linear and predictable,” he says. “It needs to be safe and stable, but it also must be fun to drive.” Again, the new active diff is a key enabler in the XFR. “When it’s locked, you get the traction you want out of corners, but when it’s open on the straight, it’s better for stability.” Cross likes his cars to understeer mildly at the limit: “It’s safer for the average driver.”

Cross says his chassis engineers “looked at the obvious Germans”—BMW M5 and AMG E-Class—early in the XFR program. But in the later stages of its development, the benchmark car became the 4.2-liter XF Supercharged. “We were quite pleased with the way that one turned out,” he notes with typical understatement.