Jaguar's Resurgence

JAGUAR'S RESURGENCE

2014 JAGUAR F-TYPE

To consider the FType, you need to understand the one Jaguar that everyone has remembered for the past fifty years: the E-Type. All snout and a massive sixcylinder under the hood. In the '60s, it was Britain's Corvette.

After the E died, Jaguar spent forty years laboring under the car's shadow. Every step the company took, every car it built—even the modern XK coupe and XJ sedan, icons in their own right— was aimed at the guy who fell in love with the E. And then, at the beginning of the last decade, the brand's genius designer, Ian Callum, began turning things around. Fie came to Jag after stints at Aston Martin and onetime Jaguar parent-company Ford and, though he loved the E-Type, he believed in looking forward. Fie pushed through the current XF, XK, and XJ sedans, three hypermodern cars that are undeniably Jaguars but

't look like Victorian sofas. And his dream has been to give the company a sports car again, something it hasn't had since the E-Type.

That's what the F-Type is. When it was officially revealed in Paris last year, there was more buzz about it than there'd been about a Jaguar in half a century.

The $69,895 F-Type is what Jaguars used to be— cars that got your loins in a knot. Like a lot of modern sports cars, it feels likea machinewhen you get in, connected and precise. Everything just works, and it's all designed to make you feel something, to enjoy tearassing down a stretch of pavement just because you can. But at the same time, it's still a Jag. You can crank out big mileage and not wear yourself out. The steering is uniquely light for a car like this; Jaguars have always been known for buttery-soft steering, the wheel almost too light, but you're meant

340-HPV-6 $69,895 5.1 SEC.

to steer this car with your fingertips, and you can, so you do.

The base engine is a supercharged V-6; it comes with 340 hp. But if you can swing it, what you really want is the optional 495-hp supercharged V-8 ($92,895). It's a version of the eight that Jaguar uses in all of its cars, a design with roots in Ford technology. Detroit by way of the English Channel—crackly, weird, and rifle-blast-loud. The sound of the engine is the first thing that hits you. The second thing is if it were $30,000 cheaper, they wouldn't be able to make enough of them.

—s. s.