Jaguar XKR

Road Test

Your Say

Test date 25 September 2006 Price as tested £70,995

For Image, effortless pace, muscular engine, body control

AgainstInterior details, unsupportive seats, small fuel tank

Ever since its introduction in 1998, the XKR has been Jaguar’s flagship, mating supercharged V8 power with its most sensuous of coupe and convertible bodies. Following the widely acclaimed launch of the new XK, the Coventry concern is bullish about its new supercharged sports car.

It uses the same basic ingredients from the regular car. So there’s all-aluminium construction with a riveted and bonded joining method (though, as with the XK, our weighing proved disappointing), V8 power with rear wheel drive and an automatic gearbox. But there’s also a dash of aggression to the styling and the promise of a more keenly focused drive.

Most of all, the XKR has the potential to address the one major criticism we had of the new XK – a lack of poke. It wasn’t that we expected the naturally aspirated XK to be a leather-lined dragster, just that a luxury sports-GT should accelerate past the hoi polloi with demure authority, and at times, the rather uncouth V8 – only lightly fettled from the XK version - seemed to be making a meal of it. In short, it appeared as if Jaguar, forced to count pennies carefully, had spent the money on the advanced aluminium chassis rather than the engine.