THE CAT’S MEOW
This isn’t your daddy’s Jag. The F-Type S Coupe stuns with killer looks and a thrilling ride.
Overview The sexiest Jag since the E-Type, now with a manual transmission
Pros Screaming engine, impeccable roadholding, a face worth surrendering to
Cons A little more torque. Mr. Supercharger, please. Could you pretty up the interior as well?
Value for money By Jaguar standards, most excellent
What would I change? More torque below 3,000 rpm, more drama to the dashboard/centre console and that’d be about it.
How I would spec it? Pretty much as you see it here. The V6 S without all-wheel-drive and with the six-speed manual box.
“Wow, Jaguars aren’t just for senior citizens any more, are they?”
Truer words never spoken, as they carry all the more weight coming from a fully-hipstered — scraggly miner’s beard, silly little short-cropped ponytail and a wonderful absence of self-knowledge — thirtysomething, the very archetype of the demographic Jaguar would dearly love to start attracting. Conditioned as they are to having Jags — the limousine-like XJ, the supposedly youthful XF and even the XK sports coupe despite its recent infusions of supercharged horsepower — aimed at who they see as fossils, his surprise is legitimate; Jaguar hasn’t made a serious attempt at tempting the young ‘uns since the E-Type.
It’s also been 20 years since a manually-transmissioned Jaguar prowled our streets (the ’94’ XJS 4.0L; I refuse to countenance the X-Type as a real Jag) so when my plaid-trousered and man-bunned friend spotted the stick-shift in the new F-Type’s centre console, he fairly swooned. “Real” is what I think he said. Now, were this a Lifestyle publication, I could wax philosophical about the absurdity of a generation that literally lives online needing more than a simple manual transmission to make one’s life “real” (Maclean’s re- cently positing that the real reason for Canada’s precipitous drop in crime is because our youth is so addicted to online gaming that they can’t be bothered to leave their basements). But the truth of the matter is that an authentic sports car really does need a manual transmission.
So far, though, Jaguar is just dipping its toes into the manual-transmission waters, the only model with clutch and stick shift the newly-minted V6 version of the F-Type. Many will posit a conspiracy plot as to why the V6 is alone in receiving the manual tranny, the blogosphere so far settling on the supposition that there’s not enough room in the V8’s new AWD drivetrain for a clutch. In fact, the real reason is that Jaguar f eels that, contrary to the notion that bigger (and more powerful) is always better, the V6 S is the F-Type’s most sporting foot forward.
In this regard, they’ll get no argument from me. Though the 550 horsepower AWD R Coupe (which replaces the rear-driven, 495hp Type S) is the one with the tiger in its tail, the V6 S is ultimately more rewarding when put through its paces. For one thing, it is 133 kilograms lighter than the V8, some of that reduced avoirdupois is over the front wheels, resulting in the S’s much lighter steering. For another, the F-Type’s newly minted Instinctive All-Wheel-Drive system is not available with the ZF manual transmission, meaning that the sportiest F-Type of them all, the V6 S, is a rear-driver with a stick, just like God and Sir William Lyons intended.
And, unlike Jaguar sports cars of recent vintage that always seemed to have to work very hard at going fast, the V6 S is Usain Bolt-like in the seeming ease with which it dispenses speed. The steering, seemingly too light at low speeds, never gets flighty as speeds increase and there’s a confidence in the handling that is only achieved by the most balanced of sports cars. Indeed, the V6 S steers as precisely as the best of Porsches — think Cayman R here, not 911 — the combination of minimal effort/maximum reward by far the best in Jaguar’s lineup, past or present. Elevating the plot even higher is an adjustable suspension system — Adaptive Dynamics in Jaguar parlance — that is, well, really adjustable. In fact, when I first picked up the S, I thought they had mistakenly given me the 340-hp base model, the stripper with cushy suspension targeting all those dilettantes wanting sports car styling with minivan comportment. But, no, it’s just that unlike so many competitive models whose suspension choices are simply “hard” and “rockhard,” toggling the Jag to its comfort mode results in some actual compliance. Of course, the “Dynamic” setting reduces body roll to virtually nil, exactly what one expects from a sporty coupe pretending to Porsche-dom. Nonetheless, that something so comfortable can be so unnervingly implacable when cornering at 1g is hopefully as important to the F-Type’s success as its comely good looks.
Of this last, there can be no doubt. Jaguar sales are up and traffic in its dealers’ showrooms has been soaring since the F-Type was launched last year. It might indeed prove how shallow we really are, but the F-Type’s looks alone have attracted more consumers to the brand in the last 18 months than 10 years of fueleconomy-reducing, emissions-sparing aluminum spaceframes and the addition of AWD to its sedans.
Compared with the sultry exterior, the F-Type’s cabin is comparatively ordinary. Oh, it’s stylish enough and my tester was replete with enough red leather to resemble a bordello. 2016 also sees a Meridian sound system made standard equipment along with Sirius satellite radio and 14-way power adjustable seats. But, if the F-Type has a fault, it is that the interior lacks a sense of drama. Once you get past the surprise that there’s a stick shift in there, the rest looks, frankly, ordinary. The one exception is the cooling system’s centre vent which rises out of the dashboard like the Phoenix breathing welcomed fresh air whenever you engage the air conditioning system. Jaguar, determined to have a fancy name for everything, calls it an Active Central Air Vent. It’s a cool trick; I just wish there were more of them.
It’s also a little tight in the cabin. As my dear old dad says, “There’s room for your ass and a gallon of gas.” Think Mercedes-Benz SLK or Porsche Cayman here, not Jag XK. There’s precious little room to tilt your seat back unless you scrunch the seat way forward. If you’re chunky, you’ll find the seats tight and you’re passenger won’t be reclining their way to slumber on a long trip. The hatchbacked trunk, on the other hand, is passably roomy; there’s plenty of room back there, though especially large golf bags might be a tight fit.
One area that lacks no drama is the driveline. Indeed, though many — including my Driving’s own cohort Brian Harper — wax lyrical the V8’s booming exhaust note, I prefer the V6 S’s soundtrack. More World Superbike scream than the V8’s NASCAR drumbeat, the S sounds like it’s ripping something, only a lot more forceful than silk.
And you will have reason to rev the 3.0-litre V6. One of the interesting side plots to the F-Type’s new short-throw ZF gearbox is that the previously available eight-speed automatic disguised the supercharged V6’s surprising lack of low-end torque. I say surprising because superchargers are supposed to really pump up the volume at low revs and, truth be told, the V6 S feels like its has no more — but no less! — low-end grunt than, say, a normally-aspirated Cayman GT4. Of course, for those in love with the stick, that’s just one more (unnecessary) excuse to rev the engine. And there is plenty of power, culminating in 380 horsepower at 6,500 rpm by which time the V6, especially if you’ve opened up the Active Sport Exhaust’s Active Bypass Valves, is screaming like a BMW superbike with an Akrapovic pipe.
With the ascendancy of the F-Type — and the demise of the XK — Jaguar is leaving behind the last vestiges of “grand touring,” that tired old sobriquet that nicer autojournalists trotted out when they wanted to say that the XK was soft and squidgy. The steering is impeccable, the chassis tight and the motor screams like a banshee. That it is also the first stick-shifted Jaguar in more than two decades just makes it that much sexier. And you don’t have to be young to appreciate that.