SINGAPORE – So it’s been 40 years since Jaguar has made a ‘dedicated’ two-seat sports car. And it’s not just the weight of time that presses here, that last machine was the legendary E-Type, a car with an impeccable competition history, superlative performance and a reputation as one of the most beautiful cars ever designed (the most beautiful, if you’re British).

Given the context, the logically-named F-Type shows a lot of confidence on the part of Jaguar, and a lot of balls as well. Given that there’s no space between the alphabets ‘E’ and ‘F’ (what’s that about music being the space between the notes, or life being the time between happenings?) but the gulf of 40 years and a whole lot of changes to the original company.

As far as names go, it’s probably the most important one to ever spring from Coventry. But such is the immense legacy of the E-Type that it meant both Jaguar’s chief of design Ian Callum (responsible for gems such as the Aston Martin DB 7) and the company’s current owner, Rattan Tata, wanted to make a spiritual successor since forever. Neither did the whole company keep any of the stops in, it seems, in its quest to make a ‘proper’ sports car.

Which makes it all the more pleasing that the F-Type lives up to the hype.

The car was always going to use the same powertrain technology, in order not to bankrupt the R&D budget of course, so it’s no surprise to find the same 3.0-litre supercharged V6, essentially a ¾ version of the lovely 5.0-litre V8, under the very long prow of the F-Type. It’s mated to the industry-standard eight-speed ZF gearbox, as it is in the XF and XJ four-door sedans. Power output is an identical 340bhp for the bog-standard F-Type, but this version, the F-Type S, has 380bhp and 460Nm of torque and costs $20,000 more. No surprise then, that it’s the current best-seller, since that’s not much of a bump, not when compared to the brutal near-500bhp, $490,000 V8 model, anyway.

What’s completely novel is the platform. After all Jaguar has no proper sports car (the four-seat XK was always more of a GT, no matter how many R,S,T,L,N,Es were appended to its name) and this one needed to be a dedicated convertible first and foremost, just like its illustrious forebear.

Jaguar’s aluminium expertise keeps overall weight down (1,614kg, which is the ballpark for a modern sports car, although the hard-top SLK is 1540kg only), with the engine taking up the space between the front wheels, the passenger cell pushed backwards – in other words, your classic front-engined convertible. Both V6s have a mechanical limited-slip differential, while the S model has adaptive suspension as well, while all three models have double-wishbone suspension front and rear.

It all sounds very impressive on paper, and the result is more than the sum of its parts. The inherent setup of the car is stiff, as is expected of a sporty roadster, so you do get quite a bit of the feeling for the road – it’s expansive and planted, on one hand, but bumps do make you nod your head in (inadvertent) agreement.

The V6, generous and refined in the XF, has undergone a Miley Cyrus-like transformation – I suppose the equivalent of a flesh-coloured bikini is a trigger-happy throttle response and sports exhaust system, luckily the latter has a flap you can toggle. The supercharged V6 is now a screaming, maniacal buzzsaw of a powerplant – 0-100 in 4.9 seconds, but it certainly feels faster (or sounds faster). Start the engine, it gives a nasal snort and settles to a rather obnoxious idle, then improves as you pick up the gas. It stumbles on the initial application occasionally, but from then on is pure fun. Hold the gears via the paddle shifters and it sounds fabulous, from a drone to a roar past 3,000rpm and on to a near-F1 scream, followed by a defiant crackle as you lift off.

By then you’re probably going far too quickly for your license, but the F-Type has a tremendous amount of grip and poise at high speed. The entire feeling is that of a naughty car that wants to go fast – it’ll tolerate cruising, but it truly feels happy above 80km/h, whether in bends or straights. And speaking of bends, it’s got the classic long-nose roadster understeer until you get the power down – heavily – so it seems best enjoyed when hurled into bends at generous pace and then blasting right out of them, traction control optional.

That gives the car a rather ‘British beef’ charm than the ‘German precision’ of its closest rival, the Porsche Boxster – the F-Type is one you muscle in, then fight it out and swallow down the unsettled edges, while the Boxster is a wrist-flicking dancer. No matter which you prefer, the F-Type has plenty of character and identity all of its own, arguably one of the most important characteristics in this segment.

So is it fun to drive? Yes, yes and yes. It leaves us to skimp on everything else, really, although the car doesn’t fall far short in many other respects. It looks fabulous, and draws attention like few other cars in its price bracket. The rear end styling is particularly fetching, with the broad shouldered stance, centrally-mounted exhaust and long strip tailights.

The close-fitting interior is classic Jaguar. Handsome and well-appointed, with some drama courtesy of auto-rising central air vents and a dynamic mode showing you Gs pulled and dynamic mode setup. What’s less appealing are some plastic bits, like the signal stalks, which don’t belong in a car costing this much. A 380 watt premium Meridian audio system is present too, which is made a bit redundant by the crackling exhaust, but performs very well thanks to its power and sub-woofer. All the better since as a soft-top convertible, it does get a bit noisy, and with the roof down wind noise is deafening at very high speed.  

So there are a few rough edges, but the most important bit is that the F-Type itself has a very appealing ‘rough’ edge to it, in terms of drive, and is beautiful and young enough to draw eyeballs and coax wallets (or chequebooks) out of back pockets. Whether like Ms Cyrus we will still be looking at it in ten years, only time can tell. But for now, Jaguar’s made the sports car it’s always deserved. We only wish it didn’t wait 40 years to do it.

Jaguar F-Type S

NEED TO KNOW

Engine 2,995cc, supercharged, 24V, V6
Power 380bhp at 6500rpm
Torque 460Nm at 5000rpm
Gea
rbox 8-speed automatic
Top Speed 275km/h
0-100km/h 4.9 seconds
Fuel efficiency 9.1L/100km
CO2 213g/km
Price $430,000 with COE

Also Consider: BMW Z4 sDrive35is, Mercedes-Benz SLK 350, Porsche Boxster S

 Photos by Derryn Wong