Jaguar F-Type R: Gone But Not Forgotten

My mum loves Jags. Her first job involved selling Jaguars and Land Rovers. She learnt to drive by wrestling the latter in the desert, so you’ll forgive her harbouring fond memories of only the former in which dad would take her for a drive whenever he could whisk away the boss’s car keys. Years later I continued that tradition, commandeering the keys to test cars (in the days when there was a Jaguar press fleet) to take mum for a drive. Taking her round the block in the F-Type R remains my fondest memory, how she worriedly inquired if the exhaust had actually fallen off as the F-Type emitted a fusillade of pops, crackles and violent explosions.

That car was epic. It was already long in the tooth in 2016 but, my god, did it sound like the world was coming to an end. Extraordinarily nonsensical, borderline illegal, from the days when the cat on the rump wasn’t a cuddly pussycat. The F-Type was Jaguar taking on the 911 and while it was nowhere near as dynamically polished, it was a hundred times more hilarious. And scary. Oh boy was it scary. Up in that long nose was a big V8 force fed by – a rarity even a decade ago, now almost non-existent – a supercharger. It was as old school as old school could get. 543bhp from five litres, kicking the tail sideways without any provocation. That chassis was wholly incapable of reining in the ridiculous power; as hilarious as it was alarming.

I remember returning from our test, the car was still in Track mode, the ESP was very much on, yet I exited a toll booth sideways. Switch off ESP and you were more sideways than straight, the rear spinning up with anything more than three-quarters application of the throttle. And if it was raining, as it was when we were testing, you needed to belt up your big-boy pants. Taking on the 911 meant dipping into Jaguar’s deep reserves of history for an iconic silhouette, very obviously riffed off the E-Type. The sweep of the roofline, the haunches, that muscular tail with four big fat pipes, it left you with a tingle in your pants.

By the time we tested the F-Type R in India the nose was already due for a facelift and the interior was in even more urgent need of one, all of which came a few monsoons later. And that’s when the cat’s claws were clipped. The 2-litre F-Type was the first time Jaguar had produced a sports car with fewer than six cylinders. Sure it was lighter, handled better, was more usable and ended up being far more affordable. But compared to the theatrics of the V8, even the V6, this was a pussy cat. All of which will pale in comparison to what is coming – the fully-electric, brutally-rendered and deliberately-divisive Jag. Can’t wait to take mum for a drive and hear what she thinks.