Saying goodbye to the F-Type
JUST AS the December issue was going to press in early October, Jaguar announced that 2023 will be the F-Type’s final model year. Following chairman Thierry Bolloré’s ‘Reimagine’ strategy from February 2021 that will establish Jaguar as an electric only manufacturer by 2025, this is didn’t come as much of a surprise. Yet with the car arriving early in my tenure as editor of Jaguar World and after driving several examples over the last decade, it’s still one I feel close to and will mourn its passing.
The XJ-S and both generations of XK might have been successful and still popular models, but they were always largely comfortable grand tourers. Yet due to the classic XK family from 1948 and the three series of E-Type that followed, Jaguar will always thought of as a manufacturer of sports cars.
As the company’s then global brand director, Adrian Hallmark, said during the F-Type’s 2012 reveal, “For Jaguar not to have a true sports car in its folio is as unacceptable as Ferrari or Porsche. That’s where the essence of Jaguar’s image is best displayed. We have a rightful place in that segment and there’s a massive expectation from external forces for us to be here. We don’t need to explain what we’re doing. So for that reason, it wasn’t a difficult decision to move in that direction.” Ten years later and that statement remains just as true.
Models such as the Tesla Roadster and Lotus Evija prove electric vehicles can rival those with a traditional internal combustion engine in terms of driver engagement but with nothing on the immediate horizon, we’ll have to wait to discover if this is a route Jaguar decides on. If it’s to compete with more exclusive manufacturers like Bollore suggested it would in 2021, such as Porsche and Aston Martin for example which are no doubt developing their own two-seater EVs, then it’s one I reckon Jaguar needs to take.
SOME OF MY MOST MEMORABLE TRIPS HAVE BEEN WITH AN F-TYPE
As mentioned earlier, I’ve been privileged to experience plenty of examples over the last decade and some of my most m
