On this episode of Ignition
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MotorTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:06 It's the letter that we lovers of Jaguars have been waiting for, for well,
00:11 40 years now.
00:12 It's the letter F, as in Jaguar F-Type.
00:15 And we've come here to Pamplona, Spain to drive three versions of the car.
00:19 The base offering, the F-Type S and the F-Type V8 S.
00:24 Though Pamplona is famous for its running of the bulls,
00:27 this will be a running of the cats.
00:29 [MUSIC]
00:39 Jaguar was building sports cars before it was even called Jaguar.
00:56 But its lineage of letter cars started in 1951 with the racing C-Types and D-Types.
01:02 But these two really just set the stage for the incomparable E-Type,
01:06 a car that Enzo Ferrari said was the best looking in the world.
01:09 And here we finally are in its successor, the F.
01:13 [MUSIC]
01:15 First stop is the base car with a 340 horsepower supercharged V6.
01:20 Let's see if it lives up to the legacy.
01:22 [MUSIC]
01:31 So Jaguar has provided a lot of information on the background of this car.
01:35 All kinds of technical specs and details,
01:37 things about the different types of aluminums they use,
01:39 things about rigidity, 30% higher that, and so on and so forth.
01:44 And boy, it's an awful lot of information that I don't think we
01:48 necessarily need to know.
01:51 Cuz the point of a car like this is that it's about enthusiasm and
01:55 emotion and feeling, not really about the type of aluminum they're using,
02:00 the grade or how many rivets are here and bondings are there.
02:04 You know what?
02:05 What we really care about is how this car feels and drives and
02:08 the emotion of the whole experience.
02:10 This is a Jaguar F-Type, for heaven's sakes.
02:12 It's not a science class or an engineering class.
02:15 So how about we just forget about this?
02:17 [MUSIC]
02:23 Here on the road, I must say I'm impressed.
02:26 The connection here between the road and the steering wheel and
02:31 these pedals feels much, much closer,
02:33 much more closely coupled than I was expecting.
02:36 It really does feel like a sports car.
02:40 I think we've been in so many Jaguars in the last few decades that are not
02:43 sports cars, and a few that sort of pretend or hint at greater road going,
02:49 sports car like character, and have disappointed.
02:52 But this one really does honestly feel like a sports car.
02:54 It is a sports car.
02:56 Now when you have full throttle, you also have full noise.
03:00 There's a baffle that opens in the exhaust system, so
03:02 you hear a greater number of DBA out of the engine.
03:06 But it didn't seem sort of silly.
03:09 Some of these systems, it goes from one volume level to like suddenly it's
03:13 cranked up real loud, and that's very contrived.
03:17 But here, that sounded quite natural, quite normal.
03:21 I'm being passed by another one.
03:23 Red cars are always faster than black ones.
03:27 [MUSIC]
03:33 As great as this is, the F-Type S with 40 more horsepower, bigger tires and
03:38 brakes, adjustable shocks, a limited slip diff, and
03:41 a number of set up possibilities, promises even more.
03:44 [MUSIC]
03:54 Now we're in the F-Type S,
04:00 which is an elaboration on the base version we drove earlier.
04:05 [MUSIC]
04:09 What makes this car different is 40 extra horsepower, number one.
04:13 But a few other things, this has adjustable damping on the shocks,
04:17 which allows for a big variation of possibilities there and body motion.
04:24 It has a slightly taller rear axle ratio.
04:27 It has a mechanical limited slip differential for
04:31 better bite through the middle of corners.
04:33 So there's a number of nice enhancements,
04:35 improvements to this car dynamically.
04:37 [MUSIC]
04:44 Now it just might be that this is the sweet spot of the range,
04:48 with extra power but not extra weight or much extra weight.
04:52 This really might be the right car.
04:56 We'll see when we drive the V8 later if that's true or not.
05:00 But this is a very, very nice improvement over the first car.
05:04 Although that was very nice.
05:06 I wouldn't call that an entry level car.
05:08 Really a base car is the wrong description.
05:11 There's nothing much base about it.
05:13 It's really quite a complete and satisfying automobile.
05:16 But this does add a little bit more to the party.
05:18 [MUSIC]
05:24 You know what I'm gonna do right now?
05:25 Let's downshift.
05:26 [SOUND] Did you hear that?
05:32 That's pretty cool, huh?
05:34 We happen to be going by some rock walls.
05:37 And what an opportunity to hear this engine.
05:39 [SOUND] The car really expresses itself audibly in a very British way.
05:47 It sounds like a British sports car should.
05:49 This car has very different proportions.
05:52 It's quite a lot shorter, stubbier.
05:55 It's also a lot wider than the E-Type was.
05:57 That gives us more room here in the cockpit to be comfortable.
06:00 We'd be really uncomfortable right now in an E-Type.
06:03 Probably not going this fast either.
06:05 [MUSIC]
06:15 To really wring this car out, Jaguar brought us to the beautiful Navara Circuit,
06:23 a 15 turn complex built way back in 2010.
06:28 It's gorgeous and very technical and so well groomed that you wonder how
06:32 Spain's unemployment rate could be as high as it is.
06:34 [MUSIC]
06:42 Despite the helpful driving instructor talking into my earpiece the whole time,
06:45 the F-Type was speaking even more clearly.
06:48 [MUSIC]
06:54 Angling into corners, the brakes are solid.
06:57 Tightening the line brings confidence building understeer and
07:00 powering out is a pure joy.
07:02 No wonder Jag put us on the track in this one.
07:05 [MUSIC]
07:15 So Jaguar took us to the track to drive the F-Type S,
07:28 the higher horsepower version, and it was a very interesting experience.
07:33 The car handled wonderfully.
07:35 It was a challenge only because the track has many, many corners and
07:39 many of the apexes are blind.
07:41 So you would have to anticipate and think and concentrate on those things.
07:45 So it was a challenging track from a technical standpoint.
07:48 But actually it was quite a delight because
07:50 the car was actually rather easy to drive, easy to drive quickly.
07:55 It went right where you wanted it to.
07:57 There was understeer when you expected it,
07:59 a little bit of tail out when you expected it.
08:02 The car has a very close couple, very controllable manner to it.
08:07 And as a consequence, you could drive rather quickly around the track and
08:10 not have to think about it too much.
08:12 A lot of cars you have to think about and concentrate on, it's doing this,
08:15 it's doing that, I better be careful of this or that thing.
08:18 But not in this case, the car was just seamless and effortless to drive.
08:22 It was more figuring out where to turn left and turn right,
08:25 that was the challenge.
08:26 [MUSIC]
08:28 And if that wasn't cool enough,
08:30 we were then handed the keys to the most extreme F-type of them all.
08:33 The supercharged V8 S, 495 horsepower, an electronically limited slip differential,
08:40 fat tires, all the ingredients that turned this pussycat of a chassis
08:45 into a very aggressive junk.
08:47 [MUSIC]
08:56 We're in now the F-type V8 S, which is quite a different car from the other two.
09:03 Like the other two, this car has the Jaguar leaping cat on the steering wheel,
09:09 but a more appropriate symbol would be a tiger, a big muscular tiger.
09:13 It's just the wrong cat.
09:15 This thing is a different breed of cat entirely.
09:18 [MUSIC]
09:24 A lot of power, 495 horsepower from a 5 liter V8 supercharged intercooled.
09:30 [MUSIC]
09:36 Like the other car, the V6 engine cars, the sounds are just terrific.
09:41 But here it's much more of a roar, it's a real V8 roar.
09:45 Let's see if we can get a little of that.
09:47 [SOUND]
09:52 And you hear that overrun crackle as well.
09:55 So it just takes all the sounds of the V6 and
09:58 just amps them up by two more cylinders and a lot more power.
10:03 Dynamically, I like this car, it's a lot of fun.
10:07 Very, very different feeling.
10:08 It's not much heavier, but I do notice the extra weight of it in terms of sort of
10:13 the polar moment of inertia effect where there's more weight in the front and
10:17 the rear.
10:18 And being separated, it feels a little bit slower to rotate,
10:22 to respond to steering.
10:24 It feels like a heavier car, even though it's not much of a heavier car.
10:28 So in terms of steering and cornering, you do notice the extra mass.
10:32 [SOUND]
10:35 My first reaction to this car was that it feels like a Mustang GT500 or
10:41 something made in England.
10:44 And you find yourself thinking of that car.
10:47 But actually, after a few miles, I was thinking more of the Aston Martins
10:51 some years ago that went the V8 route and had some similarity to this.
10:56 [SOUND]
10:59 Yeah, there's something in it.
11:00 [SOUND]
11:05 Let's just drive for a minute.
11:07 [SOUND]
11:09 So here's some hard braking, downshift a couple times, boom, boom, boom, yep.
11:14 [SOUND]
11:20 Brake hard.
11:21 [SOUND]
11:24 Some tight corners here.
11:25 [SOUND]
11:28 [LAUGH]
11:33 Again, with stability off, this might be a short drive.
11:37 [SOUND]
11:43 Now here's the unusual thing about the F.
11:46 There's simply no runt in the litter.
11:48 All three are different kinds of sweet spots.
11:51 It simply depends on your taste and wallet.
11:53 But the sweetest of them all would be the middle one, the F-Type S,
11:57 which adds noticeable speed and grip to the base chassis
12:01 without losing any of its sense of sports car agility.
12:04 Is it the E-Type's successor?
12:06 No.
12:07 Today's endless regulations make building that just about impossible.
12:11 However, it's a better F than I ever could have expected.
12:14 [MUSIC]
12:24 [MUSIC]
12:34 [MUSIC]
12:44 [MUSIC]
12:54 [MUSIC]