The cat's out of the bag

THE CAT’S OUT OF THE BAG Car styling is subjective, right? Well, not when it comes to the Jaguar E-Type. It’s impossibly beautiful. Period. Styled mainly by aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer, it caused a sensation when it was unveiled in 1961.

Now Jaguar has had the temerity to try and follow up with the F-Type.

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t has taken Jaguar almost 40 years since the last E-Type rolled off the production line in 1975 to rejoin the sports car party with the new F-Type. I met up with Julian Thomson, Jaguar’s Director of Advanced Design, at the launch of the F-Type in Pamplona, northeast Spain and asked him why there was such a long delay.

“It’s been an intimidating car to do, in many ways. Expectations are massively high. The design team has tried to make that emotional connection that Jaguar had with the C-Type, D-Type and the E-Type,” he told me.

Jaguar has a large sales bounty to gain if it gets the F-Type right. If it finds critical acclaim, thousands of customers will warm to buying other Jaguars in the present and future ranges.

Equally, if it doesn’t meet the expectations the E-Type has partially created, it will have failed – even if it sells well. In part, these risks explain why it has taken so long for Jaguar to come to market with the car.

It’s a career defining moment for the team responsible for designing and developing the car, thanks to the weight of expectations placed on its broad cat-like haunches. The British have real heritage in this market and Jaguar more so than most. That legacy shines through with this sports car and represents a return to the company’s heart: a two-seat, convertible sports car focused on performance, agility and driver involvement.

A continuation of a sporting bloodline that stretches back more than 75 years, the latest addition to the range exudes a defined, sinuous elegance.

I drove all three models in the range over more than 300km of immaculate Spanish Pyrenees blacktop, including the Circuito Navarra F1 test track. Each is a joy to drive and push deep into Porsche territory in terms of driver involvement. Each car offers sharp handling, unimpeachable body control and blisteringly good turn in. There was not one bit of twist or vibration over fast, undulating surfaces and the grip is astonishingly high.

I can confirm that the greatness has continued.

There is a choice of a 3.0 litre V6 or 5.0 litre V8, both with Roots-type twin vortex supercharged engines. S models get adaptive dampers and a very active exhaust – likely to annoy distant neighbours

Sultry songstress Lana Del Rey is the face of Jaguar’s new F-Type. Jaguar has been working hard to step up its marketing strategy and the F-Type leads the manufacturer’s renaissance as a relevant luxury brand. With the F-Type, the company has produced a car to follow the peerless E-Type. Jaguar Global Brand Director Adrian Hallmark says Jaguar’s allure is in large part due to its duality – a “unique blend of authenticity and modernity, two values that we believe are shared with Lana in her professional achievements”.

Lana wrote and performed the Burning Desire soundtrack for the viral video Desire. Created by Ridley Scott, it stars Damian Lewis as Clark, who delivers cars for living but runs into trouble after a chance encounter with a woman in the desert.

Ian Armstrong, Jaguar’s Global Marketing Communications Director, says: “Lana Del Rey is a world-class singer/ songwriter. In this video she’s used her unique ability to conjure, reflect and then reinterpret an aesthetic from a different era both for herself and for the F-Type.”

“I drive fast / Wind in my hair / I push you to the limits / Cause I just don’t care,” sings Del Rey. She says film has always been precious to her. “I’m so proud to be a part of what Jaguar has envisioned for its new car with Damian Lewis.” She says.

– but will delight petrol heads. Depress the bronze start button on the dash and the howling burble immediately telegraphs the driver-focused credentials of the car as the supercharger spools up to speed. It sounds Machiavellian as it spits, fizzes and pops on the over-run, causing small children to hide and three-abreast cyclists to make unflattering hand gestures.

Performance is dramatic across the range and is pretty much every dynamic area possible. On a 240km blast over the serpentine, undulating Spanish Pyrenees roads, the V8 S proved to be a Titan of a car. Endowed with 50:50 weight distribution and rear-wheel drive, it’s terrifically agile and rewarding to drive fast. All versions boast a dynamic mode to alter the shift pattern

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MOTO R I N G

W hat I l i k e … heer driving S competence.

It makes you shine as a driver, even when you don’t The looks. A brave move for Jaguar not to have aped the E-Type It’s not particularly thirsty or dirty for a 298km/h rocket

W hat I wo u l d l i k e … paired down, A poverty spec entry level version for R697 000 A boot capable of fitting enough clobber for a Garden Route touring weekend

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of the perfectly spaced eight-speed automatic gearbox whilst sharpening throttle response and increasing steering weighting.

The entry-level V6 offers some truly satisfying driving dynamics to rival that of Porsche’s finest efforts. You reach 0 to 100km/h in just 5.1 seconds and it rides and steers as well as any of its competitors. Even quicker, at 4.8 seconds is the V6 S, priced at R945 000.

It delivers more urgency and poise, becoming the car of choice for journalists around the Circuito de Navarra F1 testing circuit, where the mechanical limited-slip differential and two-stage stability control was put to good use.

Inside, the cockpit flows around the driver instead of being horizontal and the interface is intensely tactile, urging the driver to fully explore its mechanics with each nano-quick gear change. A row of toggle switches below the dials echoes Jaguar sports cars of the past, while a Meridian Audio systems provides audio reproduction outputs of up to 770W if the cars’ engine note gets a bit too much.

The F-Type oozes showroom-floor appeal and is thoroughly modern, with exquisitely detailed lines worthy of its sports car bloodlines.

It’s modern, for sure, but the boot, one-piece clamshell bonnet and slender rear lights are nods to the E-Type.

The small 196-litre boot limits practicality but the electric roof folds at speeds of up to 50 km/h without steeling boot space -- handy if you don’t want to look like a loser when the traffic light turns green during mid-lowering of the roof! Every F-Type has engine stop/start and the base-level car emits a parsimonious 209g/km.

So, did the F-Type recapture that magic of the E-Type? Whether it will be iconic or not will be the subject of much twittering. But it’s definitely moved the benchmark along for others to follow and is a superb all-round package worthy of all the hype.

A n I c o n ? R e a l ly ?

Read about really cool cars and you’ll find the word “iconic” littered around like plants in the Garden of Eden. But what does iconic really mean when applied to design? And is Jaguar’s new F-Type iconic?

Icons set benchmarks, are groundbreaking in terms of technology and improve on the past. The London Underground map is a prime example.

Designed by Harry Beck in 1931, when the Tube grew so large that it became impossible to map the lines and stations geographically, he designed a map based on an electrical circuit board with each line in a different colour and diamonds for interchange stations.

The red Routemaster London bus and the original MINI are also icons.

Enzo Ferrari reckoned the Jaguar E-Type was too, when he called it “the most beautiful car ever made”. Time will tell if the F-Type becomes iconic, but in the meantime the road beckons seductively and the F-Type is idling on the driveway.

PHOTOGRAPHS supplied

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