Currently reading: Best cars of 2013: Jaguar F-type
It's been 40 years since Jaguar last had a proper sports car in its line-up, but the F-type is making up for lost time

Obsolesence and renewal are the yin and yang of the modern car market, and their influence seems only to increase as the years pass.

These are the reasons why there is often surprisingly little sense of occasion to match the stage-managed fanfare you find when new metal is introduced to the likes of us. 

Few would argue about the towering stature of, say, the Porsche 911, BMW 3-series or Ford Fiesta among their peers. When you witness the covers come off a new version of any of them, you know that you’re seeing something important. But you also know that it happens fairly regularly – every six or seven years, without fail.

By the time you’ve seen two or three new Fiestas or 3-series take their bow, each individual one seems that bit less of an event. Something new, sure, but a  landmark? Not necessarily.

It’s 40 years, though, since Jaguar phased out the model that most would consider its last proper sports car and probably it’s biggest sporting legend: the E-type. Thereafter, Jaguar moved on to make larger grand touring cruisers like the XJS and XK8 instead. But then, this year, it rekindled its sporting flame.

That’s what made the launch of the Jaguar F-Type one of the highlights of 2013. Here was not just a special car, but a very rare and special moment as well. An automotive comet on a four-decade-long return cycle, burning its way back across the night sky. A UK car industry powerhouse finally puffing its chest out. The birth of a new British sporting icon, even. Maybe.

The car was test driven by the international press in Spain in April, but it was six weeks later when my first taste materialised, and in ideal circumstances. Early start on an early summer day; weather warm enough for roofless running; roads familiar; traffic light.

You’d take this kind of test over a far-flung Continental setting every time, because the familiarity of the route makes it easier to focus on the novelty, talent and identity of the car.

There’s plenty of all three in an F-type. In fact, there’s a different blend of all three – as well as of performance, motive character, handling precision, driver engagement and sporting reward – in each of the three model derivatives. Those seduced more by a keen price and a keen-handling car than raw point-to-point speed can look to the sub-£60k V6.

If you’ve got to have the no-compromise option no matter what it costs, the £80k V8 S will blow your socks off. It’s an unexpectedly old-fashioned, unreconstructed sort of car, ridiculously loud at full throttle, with enough power to make any ribbon of asphalt feel like speedway gravel with the electronics off.

But time and test experience have confirmed what Jaguar’s own Mike Cross suggested way back in our earliest stories on the F-type: that the definitive version isn’t the most expensive, but a carefully equipped supercharged V6 S.

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The Jaguar F-Type convertible provides direct competition to the 718 Boxster and the 911 Cabriolet, but can the big cat take a bite out of its Porsche rivals?

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The middle-sitting car has a healthy share of the V8’s bombastic pomp and ballistic pace, but just as much of the entry-level V6’s handling delicacy and precision. It does a bit of everything that any F-type does, in other words.

My hang-up about the car before I’d got on terms with it had been to do with positioning. I’d expected a Porsche Boxster rival, and what we’d been given was a 911 rival with a few glaring shortcomings on usability.

What acquaintance teaches you about the new Jag, though, is that it does things that neither Porsche can do and deserves to be defined in its own right. Not as the most complete sports car on the market in an objective sense, but definitely as a triumphant return to its roots for a British brand well and truly in the ascendant.

Tune in to Autocar.co.uk again tomorrow as we continue our rundown of the best cars of 2013.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce PhantomTesla RoadsterAriel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren SennaRenault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.

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John C 26 December 2013

Yes Jaguar F-type is the best

Yes Jaguar F-type is the best I bought it from www.warrenhenryjaguar.com and I love it.
AutoConception.com 22 December 2013

Hat's off to Jaguar designer Ian Callum

The new F-Type is arguably Jaguar's best exercise in car design and styling since the demise of the E-Type.
507 22 December 2013

Feels right - but.....

Feels solid and drives well, but my god is it a weak shadow of the original E-type if you take into account the role it plays in todays advanced automotive world! Over 50 years have passed and any technical comparison is of course impossible even if you take the E-type V12 into the equation but surely they could have done better than this. Will be nice to see Jaguar with new Engines and ideas in the future.