Jaguar F-Type across Portugal
Gently evolved, our favourite F-Type – the 2.0-litre coupe – is back. It’s barely changed but, given it was pretty sweet to begin with, does that matter? A 300-mile loop from Porto to midwinter mountains will decide
Are you sure the grip’s there?’ There they go again, the incessant conversations in my head spilling out into the world uninvited. Then I realise these aren’t the words of my unconscious self but those of another self entirely, and a fairly conscious one at that: photographer Alex in the Jaguar’s passenger seat. His intonation is matter-of-fact and unpanicked: given the road looks like greased glass and the off-tarmac consequences fairly dire, should we perhaps slow down?
Our speed isn’t crazy – I’m just stroking the F-Type along with the kind of conviction you need to cover mountain roads at anything like a decent average speed – but I see his point. This morning we left behind the brittle January sunshine of Porto. For the last hour we’ve been climbing. Climbing through fog-shrouded hillsides of gloomy pine. Climbing through violent rain. Climbing so high the trees have gone and the gnarled mountainside’s heavy with sheets of surreally sculpted, wind-blown ice. Snaking off into the fog ahead, the road shimmers with what looks like a total absence of grip.
But the grip is there: I can feel it. The way the F-Type moves, supple yet connected, yielding when it needs to be but with controlled authority, has for the past hour or so smoothed away my fears. Where by rights there should be doubt, slides and armfuls of understeer, instead there’s feedback, unlikely grip (we’re on summer-spec P Zero Pirellis) and the sense that the Jaguar’s far more interested in enjoying the drive than terminally smearing itself along the guardrail.
The lightest, purest F-Type (the more powerful cars use adaptive dampers and an e-diff, plus optional four-wheel drive) and the one with the modest tyre footprint (295s on the back and 255s up front on the optional 20-inch wheels, versus the F-Type R’s 305 rears and 265 fronts), on its introduction in 2018 the 2.0-litre P300 smacked of genius. Fast yet agile, frisky yet friendly, it was nearly as much fun as the Alpine A110 that arrived around the same time. On the N339 that climbs up to roof-of-the-world Lake Comprida in Portugal’s highest mountain range, you sense the P300’s magic is still here, even in these unlikely conditions. The alchemic baby F-Type’s proving a thing of joy where by rights there should be none.
Fiendish sequences of turns come and go. Fog rolls in and out like a tide, the sun occasionally breaking through only for the murk to smother its glare moments later. Turn the wheel and so cleanly and linearly does the nose respond that you immediately feel on top of the car, confident. There’s never a sense that you might be pushing your luck; of unchecked mass fighting greedy steering inputs, or of a front axle on the verge of speed-sapping understeer. It’s all so easy, so natural, brakebased torque vectoring and the car’s light nose contriving to deliver such a clean, unflustered turn-in it’s as if asking a tonne and a half of car to change direction at speed on soaked, subzero tarmac is the most normal thing in the world. You sense the load at each corner, play with it with wheel and throttle (the 2.0-litre’s always been the most adjustable of F-Types offthrottle) and revel in the car’s benign responsiveness.
So yes, in short Alex, I think the grip is there.
At the lake, 2000 metres above sea level, the view clears: a 50-mile vista where moments before the world just a few feet beyond the Jaguar’s nose had been a mystery. Jumping out of the car, the weather is vicious, the wind cutting through ⊲
On the N339 up to roof-of-theworld Lake Comprida, you sense the P300’s magic is still here
layers like you’re in your birthday suit and the freezing temperatures rendering half the lake surreally motionless. Parked up, the fast-moving cloud playing a shifting light across its silver-grey form, the F-Type looks sensational.
The ‘new’ F-Type is of course nothing of the sort, being instead a mid-life refresh of the two-seater that’s been with us since 2012. Design director Julian Thomson, previously wingman to the original F-Type’s designer, Ian Callum, has evolved the car’s timeless aesthetic to great effect: same fabulous proportions, new maturity to the faintly i-Paceesque face. Inside, the cockpit gets a 12.3-inch digital driver display pinched from the i-Pace but running bespoke software and graphics. Configure it as you wish, from a giant central tacho flanked by secondary info displays through a twin-dial arrangement to a full-screen map.
The big news is that the V6 is dead (as is the manual gearbox – just seven buyers went for the slightly clunky selfshifter in 2019…), its performance advantage over the turbo four insucient to keep it alive. Instead the gap between the P300 2.0-litre four and the flagship all-wheel-drive 567bhp, SVR-inspired R is home to a new 444bhp V8 with a choice of four- or rear-wheel drive. We’re driving the coupes that bookend the new range, the P300 and the R, but focusing on the hugely popular 2.0-litre – it alone accounted for 42 per cent of F-Type sales last year. Pricing starts at £54,060 for the coupe and £59,540 for the convertible. Alpine’s A110 costs £50,800 in Legende specification, Porsche’s Cayman T £51,145.
Frozen to the bone, we jump back in the Jaguar. I prod the heated steering wheel button and go through my short but sweet re-start routine: exhaust to noisy, drive mode to Dynamic, traction off, manual shifting.
Things get worse before they get better. Scattered snow billows across the road. Trees fossilised in ice stand incongruously rigid in the crosswind. The road signs wear surreal ice sculptures of wind-blown icicles. With each blast the Jaguar rocks on its springs.
Inside we’re cosy. This is the lightest of interior updates, and pretty much all that was good and bad about the F-Type’s cockpit remains so. The driving position is sound, as are the sports seats, but while the steering wheel’s good to work with, the clusters of controls on its spokes don’t feel right in a minimalist sports car. Quality remains a mixed bag, the suitably sumptuous trim on the instrument binnacle contrasting starkly with a generous scattering of cheap plastics, particularly the ugly seat-control panel on the doors. There’s no head-up display either, but the new configurable driver instruments are a nice touch, updating arguably the most important part of the whole interior. If only switching between the different layouts was a little swifter and slicker. Audi lets you toggle between big dials and the big map with a single button prod. In the Jaguar you sense you’re supposed to decide which one you like best and stick with it.
We leap past a couple of trundling stragglers and, at what feels like the Earth’s most inhospitable roundabout, hang a right, signposted for Valezim. Dropping altitude like a diving bomber, everything changes in a matter of moments. The weather clears, the road dries, and within a couple of corners it becomes clear we’ve stumbled across perhaps Portugal’s finest stretch of road (and that’s saying something).
The surface, durable and apparently winter-proof like coarse-grit sandpaper, looks frosted in the late afternoon light. In truth: there’s a giddying amount of grip. Pushing on, the F-Type revels in the challenge, faster and faster, parping surefootedly between rockface and guardrail on the open stretches and cheekily straight-lining the quicker S-bends. The steering’s taut and reassuring in my hands, that body control confidence-inspiring even as our speed climbs.
The descent inexorably piles on gradient like a runaway ⊲
The aesthetic’s been evolved to great e ect: same fabulous proportions, new maturity to the i-Pace-esque face
In city tra c the F-Type’s compact, easy to place and quick away from the lights
train gathering momentum, the smell of brakes billowing into the cold mountain air together with the exhaust’s blare.
The corners pile up on themselves, the road, bone-grey in colour, running riot between oddly appropriate racetrackesque red and white kerbs. Hell, there are even escape lanes of waist-deep gravel should I cook the Jaguar’s brakes. (Despite the pong the P300’s ventilated steel set-up refuses to wilt, even though it uses low-tech sliding type calipers front and rear. The R gets a £7705 ceramic brake option that also trims 21kg.) There is no other trac, the road ours and ours alone.
Each corner is the same open-invitation playground. Bleed off the brakes as you turn, feed in that apparently weightless bonnet and just lean on the grip. When the exit comes, play with the balance of lateral load and turbo torque, either punching cleanly off the turn or sending the rear momentarily sideways if you’re greedy. When these little slides come they’re a little ragged, a combination of the 2.0-litre’s open diff (Jaguar points out that a limited-slip diff would add weight and cost, but it’d be nice as a cost option) and the fact that, in extremis, the four-cylinder struggles to retain its composure, becoming a little breathless and ragged. Mostly though this is a very likeable engine; flexible (it pulls from just 2000rpm), smooth and powerful enough to feel at home in the F-Type and not like some out-of-its-depth imposter. And what price all the advantages the four brings over the V8s, not least that keen nose and the car’s relative affordability?
We pull in to a layby halfway down the mountainside, the sunset masked by rolling slate clouds except on the horizon where there burns a deep fiery orange. Like the view from some Los Angeles lookout, twinkling lights of civilisation stretch into the distance far below. The car sits quiet at last and everything is still. Earlier, up on the summit, the wind had tried to rip my door from its hinges when I climbed out. Now there isn’t so much so a breeze through the pines.
Early next morning there’s a handy, unguarded F-Type R in the car park. I’m too curious to pass up the opportunity. It’s a very different creature, everything the P300 is not, as you’d imagine given it’s nearly twice as powerful (567bhp from its supercharged V8), all-wheel drive and a whopping 223kg heavier. The P300’s delicacy is gone, replaced by a sense of merciless grip and composure. On streaming wet roads the R’s sheer footprint and nicely rear-biased four-wheel-drive system work wonders, as do the sharp but measured responses of the supercharged V8, which you’re soon merrily wringing out despite the weather. There’s a firm sophistication to the ride and, together with the heft and directness of the steering, a subtly different personality. With the F-Type’s facelift the R’s received a raft of detail chassis changes, from new springs and anti-roll bars to new knuckles, hubs and wheel bearings to boost toe and camber stiffness. Effectively the result of lessons learned on the F-Type SVR and the wild Project 8 all-wheeldrive super-saloon, the new R is an impressively rapid and composed GT. The only incongruities are the same plastics that look cheap on the £55k four-cylinder, now that they’re in a car costing twice as much, and the odd and very artificial thwack that’s been engineered into upshifts in the Dynamic drive mode – keep it smooth, please. A mighty machine, then, and proof of the F-Type’s bandwith, but the R’s no P300…
Back in the four-cylinder coupe, back on the motorway and the road ahead arcs into another tunnel. In one subterranean kilometre the world trades grey, rain and great walls of fog for blinding January sunshine. The motorway races on, weaving north-west for Porto through tunnels and over valleys on towering concrete supports.
In the Jaguar, the distance ticks by. There’s some road noise, a rustle of turbulence from the A-pillars and wing mirrors, but this is effortless distance driving. The P300’s suspension set-up somehow works as well here, riding expansion gaps ⊲
and truck grooves, as it did clinging to mountain passes. If only the eight-speed ’box would settle down – flex your toe and it starts dropping gears like a panicked street-corner dealer emptying his pockets. It’s better in the snoozier drive modes but there are no individual settings for throttle response and transmission, so if you anaesthetise the gearbox then the engine suffers the same ignominious fate. Shifting manually is no hardship though, particularly if you’ve added the optional aluminium paddles.
Soon enough we’re off the motorway and gliding back into Porto, 24 hours after we left. It’s mid-afternoon and the vignettes being played out this fine winter’s day are textbook: stubbly businessmen in chic gilets strut like they’ve no time to lose, herds of tiny dogs tow glamorous owners between boutiques, and girls in long coats and huge sunglasses sip coffee like crude oil in the almost-warm sunshine.
The F-Type feels compact in trac, easy to place, quick away from the lights and surprisingly pliant over the city’s battle-scarred cobbles. It’s also so beautiful Porto should count itself lucky we deigned to visit. Here, with sunlight to work with, the Jaguar’s previously amorphous slate-grey form is transformed into a shimmering silver sculpture. It looks fabulous: more elegant than a Cayman or A110, thanks perhaps to its classical front-engined architecture. And this is a sports car you’d happily use as a GT for the same reason. The cockpit might be light on decent-sized cubbyholes but the 299-litre boot (more than 500 without the parcel shelf, albeit in a slightly odd shape) dwarfs the Alpine’s 196-litre frunk, if not the suprisingly practical Cayman’s combined 425 litres.
We make our way through Ribeira, its tightly packed houses a multi-colour backdrop of washed-out reds and yellows, and pull up in the shadow of the double-deck Dom Luis bridge. Many of those strolling the banks switch their admiration, if only fleetingly, from the city to the Jaguar. This evolution of the F-Type is just that, an evolution – the same fine fundamentals and a little new interior tech, beautifully wrapped. Fortunately the appeal of sports cars this handsome and this good to drive is timeless.
The Jaguar’s previously amorphous slate-grey form is transformed