JAGUAR

This convertible turns heads — and for good reason.

THE FIRST all-new Jaguar F-Type sports car I saw on the road was the one I’m driving. That makes a person feel special. Royal even.

At media launches around the world, the F-Type is turning auto reviewers to jelly. It’s excusable. The thing is a ravishing beauty.

Two seats only, convertible, long snout, flirtatious rear end. If it were sculpted from marble it could be in the Louvre.

The launch of this sports car is a glimmering moment for Jaguar, a recapturing of the company’s soul as a builder of twoseater sports cars focused on breathtaking performance and stunning looks.

The F-Type comes in three versions. I drove the cheapest, the three-litre supercharged V6 with a starting price of $76,900. It puts out 340 horsepower. The F-Type S V6 cranks out 380 h.p., and the F-Type V8 S makes a crazy 495 h.p. With options, my tester was $86,450. Even with the lowest power stats, theF-Type seems to scare people. At intersections other drivers freeze. Maybe they are mesmerized by the stunning beauty, or the sound coming from the dual exhaust.

Can a V6 sound this thrilling? Yes. Raspy, edgy, menacing, eager, metallic and industrial, it is tuned for pleasure and wrapped with a bow in a $1,650 must-have option called Active Sports Exhaust. Keep it on most of the time unless passing libraries or greenhouses.

Bless Jaguar for creating the F-Type with true sports car proportions, small and mighty. Power to weight ratio is where pleasure lives. With liberal use of aluminum, the F-Type weighs in at 1,595 kilograms. It feels fast when it’s going slow. The official numbers are 0-100 km/h in 5.1 seconds, and 80 to 120 km/h, where merging and passing happens, is dispensed in 3.3 seconds.

Depending on mood, the driver can fan the flames or smother the fire in that super- charged V6. A flick of the Dynamic Mode switch sharpens throttle response, razors up the steering feel, and changes gears like lightning in the eight-speed automatic.

In this supersonic mode, announced by the barking sports exhaust, one is king of the hill.

Hold on though: before you pass 50 km/h, put the top down. It folds into the trunk in 12 seconds flat. Then, with the wind nicely

controlled by a rear-mounted deflector, enjoy the engine symphony and the occasional bird song as the landscape rolls by.

Convertibles often have “cowl shake,” the body twists without the support of a hard top holding things together. The F-Type exhibits little of this weakness. It’s stiff, and that’s what makes it precise to drive, but on rough roads the ride gets pretty lively.

The sheer glamour of the cabin will ease any annoyances though. My car had the $3,000 premium package, which includes 14-way power adjustable seats, the wind deflector, air quality sensor, and heated steering wheel among other goodies.

The seats are deeply luxurious, and the finishes on the driver’s side differ from the passenger side, in case there is any dispute about who’s in charge. Different grain on top of the instrument panel and centre console are part of the asymmetrical design.

If two people are in the car, there’s precious space for personal possessions, sunglasses, a phone, not much else. A purse must go in the trunk. The small space holds maybe a backpack or two and longer flat things like LP’s or manuscripts perhaps — things I’m sure you’ll be transporting.

For those of us on the short side, ability to lengthen the spine and sit very straight will help visibility from the low seating position. The hood is so long it’s in a different time zone. Going up a hill, one sees into the tree canopy and to Copernicus beyond. It’s disconcerting and exhilarating.

But it’s a swell cocoon. All controls are at the driver’s fingertips, paddle shifters perfectly placed. A big tachometer with the red line burning like an ember at 7,000 r.p.m. is impossible to ignore.

The F-Type includes some trademark Jaguar sorcery. The door handles are hidden and deploy when the car is unlocked to provide a “mechanical handshake to driver and passenger.” A rear spoiler is deployed from inside the cabin, and air vents rise magically from the dash when the system is turned on.

When the F-Type was launched, Jaguar called it the car they always wanted to do. To see it in profile is to witness passion at work. To drive it is to fall in love.