Driving down a busy Toronto street, my girlfriend suddenly said: “Wow, this car really turns heads!”
That about sums up the first impression this car makes. Complete strangers approach you with compliments and questions. And it only gets better when you slide into the driver’s seat, fire up the willing engine and take the 2015 Jaguar F-Type S AWD on the road.
Exterior styling
The low-slung Glacier White rocket I enjoyed this fall pleases the eye no matter how you look at it, whether you first notice its unique hood design, side skirts, rear valence or distinctive ‘S AWD’ badging.
My favourite view proved to be the posterior, where the cabin roof narrowed as it met the haunches over the rear wheels.
image courtesy Jaguar
The front end struck me as ground-scraping low, causing me to approach traffic calming measures and the bends in certain parking garage ramps with trepidation.
The Jag’s deployable rear spoiler rises automatically when it’s at speed and comes down when you lose speed. (The convertible F-Type deploys the spoiler at lower speeds than the coupés does.) Fortunately, a button near the shift knob let me lift the spoiler while the car was stationary so I could look at it in more detail. That button is there so owners can clean around the spoiler, not so that you can drive the F-Type at any speed with the spoiler up – the car retracts the spoiler once you start driving it.
Interior
Door handles sit flush to the door, Tesla-like, when the car is parked. Press the button and the handle swings out diagonally. A gentle tug opens the door, revealing Jaguar badging on the door sill.
Stepping over that sill and settling into the seat calls for acceptance of the sports-car nature of this beast. It’s so low-slung some of my passengers needed a little extra time to settle themselves into the seat. I took time too, but mainly to get out of the car. The F Type makes that task a little easier by lifting the flat-bottom heated leather steering wheel a little. Grab handles in the ceiling by the doors might help people get out of the car and onto their feet.
Once you’re inside, though, the vehicle becomes your happy place. My tester surrounded me in black stitched leather. My girlfriend found it a little sombre, so she pulled back the roof blind to reveal the tinted panoramic glass roof above us. Tall drivers, take note: even with the blind in place, I fit in the car without having to tilt my head.
image courtesy Jaguar
Firm leather adjustable seats hold you in place. Jaguar thoughtfully places seat adjustment controls on the doors, just ahead of the door handles. Once you choose the perfect combination of settings, you can save that combination in one of three (?!) memory settings.
That’s three settings for the drivers seat and three for the passenger. Somehow, in a two-seat coupé, three memory settings seems excessive… or maybe that’s just my greedy nature speaking. There’s one adjustment I wish the seats had: something to flatten the bump that forms the lower end of the headrest, which starts between my shoulder blades.
Seat settings visible on the door at the left of this picture. Image courtesy Jaguar
Other touches help you get comfortable. A short joystick to the left of the steering column serves to extend the steering wheel forward or move it up or down.
There’s very little room in the cabin, outside of cupholders, the cubby/armrest and the glovebox. Jaguar put an open storage compartment at the driver’s shoulder level.
Use the climate control and what starts out as an unbroken dashboard surface may surprise you: centre vents pop up just above the touchscreen, James Bond-style, to complement the vents by either door.
Hockey bag test
More than in most cars, the F-Type’s trunk is a product of a design vision. The roof continues its trajectory down the gentle slope of the rear window and as it gets lower, the window/hatch tapers to a noticeably narrower width. (A back end that tapered to a point would have been absolutely lovely, no matter how impractical it would likely prove.)
The compromise width Jaguar designers settled on resulted in a hatch opening was just a little wider than my hockey bag. I lifted the bag over the deployable rear spoiler (another reason to let the car keep it retracted) and placed it lengthwise in the compartment. (It would NOT fit widthwise.)
The privacy cover stayed home when the hockey bag rode in the car. Sticks rode on top of the bag, butt ends sticking out over the passenger seat. Take a hard right turn, and the sticks shift to the left, conking the driver in the head.
You don’t buy this car for roominess. At least I wasn’t driving the convertible. An owner who took delivery of his droptop F-Type in 2013 tells me he has to put his golf bag in the passenger seat.
Driving
You do buy this car if you want to hit the engine start-stop button and hear the engine snarl to life, encouraging you to put this cat through its paces. Interestingly, the start/stop button is one of three copper-coloured features in the cabin (Sorry, I meant Inis orange.)
A supercharged 3-litre V6 generates 380 horsepower, which the F-Type distributed to all four wheels on the variant I drove. Use the shift knob or copper-coloured paddle shifters to manually progress through the eight gears.
Want louder, “richer” engine notes? Press the Active Exhaust button to have the Jag produce that noise. The button’s icon is meant to resemble the twin exhaust pipes in the centre of the car’s hindquarters. I initially mistook this icon for a pair of sunglasses. Thanks to the fine writers of the F-Type’s owner’s handbook, I quickly disabused myself of that misunderstanding.
Drive settings buttons reside in front of the shift lever. image courtesy Jaguar
You get Active Exhaust automatically when you choose Dynamic Mode, a feature that enables more aggressive, louder, quicker driving. Jaguar also adds a snow/rain/ice mode to help the car behave in low-grip conditions. Choose either mode using the third copper-accented control, a switch by the shift lever.
Moving forward, the snarls don’t end, though they do pause. The Jag shuts down when stopped, as it was at red lights, stop signs, or when in Park. This is Jaguar’s Intelligent Stop/Start system at work. Lifting my foot off the brake caused the engine to quickly snarl to life again. The F-Type drinks premium fuel freely from its 70-litre tank, so I’m sure many drivers will appreciate any chance to economize.
To engage this more economical way of driving the Jag, press the button featuring a green icon with the letter A encircled by an almost complete circle broken by an arrowhead pointing clockwise.
Wide C-pillars constrict the rear view. Jaguar engineered a great rearview camera system and complements it with proximity radar equipment to keep you out of trouble in tight places like parking garages. I relied heavily on the camera image and the guidelines that the system overlays onto the camera image.
Technology
Many automakers provide smartphone apps to complement their cars, and Jaguar is no different. (I didn’t try these applications since I didn’t create an owner’s profile with the company.) To prove it knows its buyers, the InControl Remote application enables owners to download recent stored trips from the Journeys screen into a .csv file. I presume that makes it straightforward to import the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet or other software and track driving-related expenses. It’s the digital, automatic equivalent of mileage logs, and it sounds like a great convenience for buyers who use their F-Types for work trips.
Jaguar thoughtfully places a “Take Me Home” icon on one screen. This feature programs a trip from the car’s current location to the driver’s home, saving the driver the trouble of programming one of the most commonly taken trips.
InControl is Jaguar’s way of curating apps that can be used in a vehicle. I figure Jaguar wants to take care of this since the mobile OS makers haven’t yet caught up with demand for the ability to use apps via a vehicle’s touchscreen. Frankly, this isn’t Jaguar’s job, nor is it that of any carmaker, in my humble opinion. Proper curation in mobile application stores (hello Apple? Google?) ought to enable drivers to use apps safely in their cars.
The Meridian 770W Surround Sound System features 12 speakers, 770 watts of maximum output and Meridian Trifield™ technology. The sound was rich, but I had to turn down the thumping bass subwoofer from its middle position so certain bass notes wouldn’t hammer me.
Pricing
The starting MSRP on the F-Type S AWD is $96,500. My tester came out to $107,325
including options, destination, delivery and a $100.00 green tax.
Conclusion
As great as the F-Type looks, it drives even better. It’s so well-mannered it can fool drivers into thinking they’re obeying the speed limit. It’s tempting to push the car to limits most drivers will never reach on open roads, but if they try, the F-Type won’t let them down. It’s a dream to drive, from the power on tap to handling to amenities, right down to the snarl you’d expect of a cat.