TOPGEAR’S LONG-TERM CARS. TESTED & VERIFIED
Jaguar F-Type R
HELLO
£104,880 OTR/£109,360 as tested/£1,132 pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Was Jag’s final petrol sports car the wrong car at the wrong time?
DRIVER
Greg Potts
IT MAY SAY HELLO UP ABOVE, BUT WHAT FOLLOWS WILL ACTUALLY
be an extended goodbye to a car that we’ve known and (mostly, but not always) loved for quite some time. Yep, we’re about to spend six months in a Jaguar F-Type before it’s killed off for good later this year. RIP, old friend.
It’s a slight shame that ‘our’ F-Type has arrived in such a dour spec, though. The Carpathian Grey paint is a £475 option and isn’t a box that I’d have ticked. Sadly, the brilliantly bright blue and yellow shades that arrived with the facelift car have long since been removed from the configurator, but you can still spec options like Firenze Red, British Racing Green or a lovely lighter shade that Jag calls Giola Green. The 20-inch wheels are painted in gloss black too – a photographer’s worst nightmare – and we’ve got an all-black (officially known as Ebony) leather interior. There’s a fixed rear spoiler too and I’ve never been a fan of a bewinged F-Type.
Still, I shouldn’t complain, not least because the bits underneath the skin are extremely exciting. This is the full fat, £100k+ F-Type R with Jaguar’s 5.0-litre supercharged V8 making 567bhp and 516lb ft of torque – the same numbers as the pre-facelift SVR. That power is sent to all four wheels and an electronic diff aims to ensure maximum traction – not always a given in an F-Type.
I should also mention that this is actually the last of the line R 75 Plus trim too, so you get many other extras thrown in too. More about them later.
While it’s with us the F-Type has many questions to answer before it passes on to the next life. Has it actually ever won a TopGear group test? Can this final iteration hold a candle to the current Porsche 911? Will we actually miss the last ever petrol Jag sports car when it’s gone? We’ll find out over the next half year.
Alfa Romeo Tonale
GOODBYE
£48,495 OTR/£53,345 as tested/£534 pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Does Alfa’s late arrival deserve a place at the small SUV party?
DRIVER
Esther Neve
THIS IS A SAD DAY. THE TONALE IS GOING TO MEET ITS MAKER. QUITE literally. We have had the pleasure of the Alfa’s company for six months, it’s be
