PAUL WALTON

Saying goodbye to theF-Type

JUST AS the December issue was going to press in early October, Jaguar announced that 2023 will be the F-Type’s final model year. Following chairman Thierry Bolloré’s ‘Reimagine’ strategy from February 2021 that will establish Jaguar as an electric only manufacturer by 2025, this is didn’t come as much of a surprise. Yet with the car arriving early in my tenure as editor of Jaguar Worldand after driving several examples over the last decade, it’s still one I feel close to and will mourn its passing.

The XJ-S and both generations of XK might have been successful and still popular models, but they were always largely comfortable grand tourers. Yet due to the classic XK family from 1948 and the three series of E-Type that followed, Jaguar will always thought of as a manufacturer of sports cars.

As the company’s then global brand director, Adrian Hallmark, said during the F-Type’s 2012 reveal, “For Jaguar not to have a true sports car in its folio is as unacceptable as Ferrari or Porsche. That’s where the essence of Jaguar’s image is best displayed. We have a rightful place in that segment and there’s a massive expectation from external forces for us to be here. We don’t need to explain what we’re doing. So for that reason, it wasn’t a difficult decision to move in that direction.” Ten years later and that statement remains just as true.

Models such as the Tesla Roadster and Lotus Evija prove electric vehicles can rival those with a traditional internal combustion engine in terms of driver engagement but with nothing on the immediate horizon, we’ll have to wait to discover if this is a route Jaguar decides on. If it’s to compete with more exclusive manufacturers like Bollore

suggested it would in 2021, such as Porsche and Aston Martin for example which are no doubt developing their own two-seater EVs, then it’s one I reckon Jaguar needs to take. As mentioned earlier, I’ve been privileged to experience plenty of examples over the last decade and some of my most memorable trips have been with an F-Type. Three that spring to mind include visiting several European race tracks with a 3.0-litre V6 S, navigating Scotland’s magnificent North Coast 500 using a 5.0 R (pictured) and then to Turin with a 2.0 to photograph one of its distant ancestors, the XJ-S-based Pininfarina Spyder. Although very different examples and journeys, what they and all the others I enjoyed SOME OF MY MOST shared was a sense of fun that other, perhaps more ordinary cars, would miss out on. MEMORABLE Yet for me the F-Type was never a perfect TRIPS HAVE BEEN car. Based on a section of the X150 XK’s chassis, I always felt it was too big and tooWITH AN F-TYPE wide and the V8 models with AWD too heavy. Storage in the convertible is also ludicrously tight and it was always a squeeze to fit luggage for two plus my camera equipment into the boot. Plus, the F-Type has always been too expensive with even the entry 2.0 R-Dynamic convertible currently costing £68k, a massive £23,500 more than a comparable BMW Z4. And although pretty, in my eyes it’s not as memorable as some of Jaguar’s past models including the E-Type or even XJ-S. Remove the Growler badge on the nose, and the design doesn’t necessarily say Jaguar. These niggles aside, like all good powerful two-seaters should be, the F-Type, is still gloriously decadent and I can’t think of a better way for the company’s 75-year history in traditional, petrol-engined sports cars to come to an end. PW