BUYING GUIDE
Fancy the last Jaguar sports car? With a budget of £20k you’re in with a shout and we unravel the confusing range
THIS YEAR sees uswaving off the Jaguar F-Type after 11 years, with any hint of a replacement having been firmly squashed by JLR’s radical plans for themarque. As a swansong for the iconic line of Jaguar sports cars kicked off in the postwar gloomby the XK120, itwas an impressive effort, offering supercar pace and light weight tech which belied the small size of its maker on the global automotive stage.
It had been a long time coming, too. The XJ-Swas always intended asmore of a grand tourer than an out-and-out sports car, with the first scoop shots of a proposed ‘F-Type’ not appearing until the late ’80s. This was the XJ41/XJ42 which was worked up to the running prototype stage courtesy of Karmann, yet which was un ceremoniously canned after the Ford acquisition of Jaguar on cost grounds. In due course the XK8 appeared as Jaguar’s newcoupe, initially in X100 and then in aluminium-bodied X150 guise, yet both weremore in the grand touring mould, despite the for midable pace of the later R-badged X150 models.
The successor to the E-Type would in fact have towait for 38 years before itwas officially announced at the New York Auto Showin April 2012. Naturally by that time development was already well underway and following a sprint up the Good wood hill by a camouflaged proto type in June, the production F-Typewas unveiled in September that year at the Paris show.
Styled under Ian Callumand using Jaguar’s signature bonded and riveted aluminium construction, the F-Type was very different from the XK – smaller, more focused and crucially, offered only as a two-seater.
The carwould go on sale in the UK from March 2013, initially only in convertible form with dealers collecting their first demonstrators in a special event at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena on April 18.
At launch, three models were offered: F-Type, F-Type S and F-Type V8S. The entry-level F-Type was powered by the super charged 3-litre AJ-126 V6 engine rated at 340PS, with the F-Type S running the same engine rated at 380PS and the F-Type R turning things up to another level altogether courtesy of the supercharged 5-litre AJV8 good for 495PS. No manual option was available, all models driving the rear wheels via an eight-speed ZF automatic box, which was a traditional torque converter automatic rather than the sequential manual units then becoming fashionable, but the ‘Quickshift’ technology did make it agreeably responsive. The entry-level car used an open differential, the 380PS model boasted a mechanical LSD and the V8 car used the electronic ‘e-Diff’. In November 2013, the F-Type coupe was teased at the Los Angeles show, with the car unveiled fully in February 2014 and a rather contrived event which saw Jose Mourinho take delivery of the fi
