. PREDATOR Posted May 10, 2020 Posted May 10, 2020 Jaguar is striking out into a fresh design era under new design director Julian Thomson and so it seems right that the subject of this week’s road test should be a sharpened-up, redesigned version of its talismanic F-Type. With design lead times being what they are, it’s likely that this car was signed off long before former design boss Ian Callum departed the scene in June 2019. Be that as it may, as your eyes will confirm, this all-aluminium classic front-engined British-built sports car has never looked better. Now to address whether such an effective facelift has come accompanied by handling and usability improved to similarly striking effect. The F-Type line-up at a glance The F-Type’s engine range no longer includes a six-cylinder option; the firm instead offers a detuned supercharged V8 as a mid-range model, which is also the only engine derivative available with a choice of rear- or four-wheel drive. The car comes in a choice of four trim levels, although not every engine is available in combination with all four. Entry-level trim, for example (passive suspension, open diff, 18in rims), can only be had on a four-cylinder P300, with the P450 getting R-Dynamic trim (electronic limited-slip diff, adaptive dampers) as standard. Coupés are around £5500 cheaper than convertibles. You needn’t look very far to see where the majority of the F-Type’s facelift budget has been spent. The car has a sharp-eyed new look that freshens its visual appeal really effectively. New bumpers, grille, headlights and tail-lights and a reprofiled bonnet all feature, along with new alloy wheel designs and a renewed colour palette. The F-Type’s engine range has been altered quite a bit over the car’s lifetime and now offers arguably greater breadth of choice than do any of its direct rivals, albeit with slightly less associated variety. Jaguar added 296bhp 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol power in 2017, having introduced four-wheel drive with the range-topping SVR version in 2016 and then rolled it out more widely. Slim new headlights are a key part of the F-Type’s styling overhaul. With the R model, they’re adaptive ‘pixel LED’ lights as standard, which cost £1200 as an option lower in the range; and they’re both powerful and responsive to dip. With this update, however, the firm has phased out supercharged V6 versions of the car (at least as far as European markets are concerned) and introduced a new ‘detuned’ 444bhp supercharged 5.0-litre V8 variant to fill the mid-range void that they have left. Four-wheel drive is available as an option on this mid-range P450 version and is standard on the range-topping 567bhp V8-powered P575 F-Type R we elected to test. Entry-level four-cylinder P300s are rear drive only. All F-Types now come with an eight-speed automatic gearbox from ZF. Jaguar’s suspension and running gear revisions are at their most extensive on the F-Type R, which gets wider 20in alloy wheels than its direct predecessor had, as well as new rear-axle hub knuckles and ball joints, and new adaptive dampers, coil springs and anti-roll bars. The transmission gets the same electronics used in the XE SV Project 8 super-saloon’s, allegedly delivering quicker paddle shifts, and the engine produces marginally more power and torque than did the V8 of the old R. The interior may have had less attention lavished on it than the body panels but it has nevertheless been renewed in some key areas. It remains a more lavish and enveloping place than a great many sports car cabins and is one of several reasons that the car makes such an enticing prospect as an every-day driver. Outright cabin space is still tighter than in some rivals and forward visibility is a little bit pillarbox-like. For taller drivers, too, it remains worthwhile avoiding the optional panoramic roof in order to maximise available head room. Even so, our tallest tester, at 6ft 3in, didn’t have trouble getting comfortable in the car. Central two air vents rise out of the top of the dash, just as they always did, when you turn on the blower. There remains a big difference in boot space between the coupé and convertible versions, which ought to be remembered by anyone who has touring in mind. The coupé offers a storage area of up to 509 litres with the parcel shelf removed. It’s big enough, Jaguar claims, for two sets of golf clubs, as long as you know how to arrange them. The driving position remains good: low-slung, comfortable over distance and fairly well supported in the case of the R, which gets Jaguar’s more deeply bolstered ‘performance’ seats as standard. In front of you is the car’s new 12.3in digital instrument screen, which presents its graphics clearly and offers a choice of layouts. Jaguar F-Type infotainment and sat-nav The outgoing F-Type’s ageing infotainment system has been replaced by Jaguar’s latest 10.0in InControl Touch Pro set-up, via which you can stream online music either by downloading Jaguar’s app or simply by using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. It’s a decent system rather than a great one, truth be told. Although the layout makes for fairly good usability, there’s still a little bit of latency in the time it takes to respond to your finger, and the home screen layout isn’t quite as flexible or configurable as you might like. There are two options available for audio systems, both supplied by Meridian. The standard one has just under 400W and 10 speakers and the premium one (£990) gets 770W of amplification and 12 speakers. Our test car was fitted with the standard system, which had plenty of power and good clarity. It was a contentious decision when Jaguar introduced a four-cylinder engine to one of its sports car ranges three years ago, but also a pretty smart one if you consider that, by doing so, it gave itself permission to keep dropping Bridgend-built supercharged V8s into at least some F-Types. An element of uncertainty still surrounds the future of this mill, with the Ford plant that makes it set to close in a matter of months and only unconfirmed rumours that the line is to be moved to Jaguar Land Rover’s Wolverhampton engine facility. We’ll put a pin in that for now, however, and just trust that the right decision will be made – because few production engines mix bombastic audible charm with brute strength to such spectacular effect as this one. The traction control is less gung-ho in ‘Trac DSC’ mode, giving you more of a feel for the way the driveline wants to shuffle torque, but it still throws too much forwards too fast when the rear wheels start to spin. It feels reactive, not responsive. It gives the F-Type a multiplicity of roles to play: the sports car, yes, but also the burbling hot rod and even the supercar-scalping point-to-point giant-slayer at times. The car’s outright performance level is pretty monumental, although this isn’t like a modern turbocharged V8: it needs plenty of revs before hitting maximum reheat, so the F-Type R isn’t a car that’ll take off in a high gear quite like a big Porsche or Mercedes-AMG. At times, if only when you make those kinds of comparisons, it feels just a little lazy and unresponsive from around 2000rpm and the gearbox has to work that bit harder in kickdown to make up for the shortfall. However, the pay-off is a power delivery that really comes to life above 4000rpm. You’ll seldom have the opportunity to fully uncork it on the road but you’ll vividly enjoy it on the occasions when you do. Here, the AJ-V8 has ferocity and audible drama that, for some, will border on the histrionic and juvenile. Not for anyone with petrol in their veins, mind you. Only in the way it tends to crackle and spit on the overrun did any of our testers consider the motor’s character over the top. That the gearbox is undoubtedly slicker and feels more intuitive when operating in manual mode than when left in ‘S’ or ‘D’ is one way in which this powertrain yields a little to the very best dual-clutch performance car transmissions. Its paddle shifts certainly come quickly enough and, by timing them yourself, you only get more out of the experience when you’re really dialled in.
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