Heroic might sound like a dramatic way to describe the Jag XF, but I think it's about right.
Despite all the acres of bad news about it in the press, it's clear that the company has kept its head down and got this make-or-break car bang on. It needed to, and it has.
The design has had us all talking - and talking - about it ever since we saw the thinly disguised concept in Detroit. Which is precisely what it was supposed to do. Now we've seen the finished car the love/hate debate continues, and I'm sure it isn't going to stop anytime soon.
But now that we have driven the cars, perhaps we can extend the conversation to the important business of how the car drives. That one's a lot easier to reach a general agreement on: it's excellent.
It's not the outright fastest and probably wouldn't have the quickest overall lap time compared with some of its overpowered German rivals, but non-race drivers will have the most fun in the XF.
Drive it with all the electronics turned on and it's fine. Quieter than a submarine and smoother than a badger, it glides between corners like it's on a big cushion of air. The SV8's ride's a tiny bit choppy up to about 40mph, but then that's part of the price you pay for running 20-inch wheels.
They are not really there for slow speeds anyway. They're there to make the most of the chassis when you turn all the electronics off. This is when you discover that the Jaguar XF is not just a good handling car, but a great one.
Without getting too technical, you can get this car madly, hilariously out of shape and then bring it back into line without needing the skill of The Stig to do so. Where most cars have a narrow, sometimes hard-to-find, band hidden in their handling where they switch from under to oversteer, the XF's feels like it's a mile wide.
Because of this huge bandwidth, you can really feel the car working and therefore make confident inputs to the steering and throttle to control its attitude. You'll be able to extract your money's worth from this car on a regular basis, not every once in a while at a track day. Where you'll crash anyway.
And that's the impression that stays with you as you walk away from the XF. You can argue with the looks of the thing, but you can't with the way it makes you feel.
Heroic? I've been trying to think of a better word but, yeah, it's something like that.
Source: Top Gear
Despite all the acres of bad news about it in the press, it's clear that the company has kept its head down and got this make-or-break car bang on. It needed to, and it has.
The design has had us all talking - and talking - about it ever since we saw the thinly disguised concept in Detroit. Which is precisely what it was supposed to do. Now we've seen the finished car the love/hate debate continues, and I'm sure it isn't going to stop anytime soon.
But now that we have driven the cars, perhaps we can extend the conversation to the important business of how the car drives. That one's a lot easier to reach a general agreement on: it's excellent.
It's not the outright fastest and probably wouldn't have the quickest overall lap time compared with some of its overpowered German rivals, but non-race drivers will have the most fun in the XF.
Drive it with all the electronics turned on and it's fine. Quieter than a submarine and smoother than a badger, it glides between corners like it's on a big cushion of air. The SV8's ride's a tiny bit choppy up to about 40mph, but then that's part of the price you pay for running 20-inch wheels.
They are not really there for slow speeds anyway. They're there to make the most of the chassis when you turn all the electronics off. This is when you discover that the Jaguar XF is not just a good handling car, but a great one.
Without getting too technical, you can get this car madly, hilariously out of shape and then bring it back into line without needing the skill of The Stig to do so. Where most cars have a narrow, sometimes hard-to-find, band hidden in their handling where they switch from under to oversteer, the XF's feels like it's a mile wide.
Because of this huge bandwidth, you can really feel the car working and therefore make confident inputs to the steering and throttle to control its attitude. You'll be able to extract your money's worth from this car on a regular basis, not every once in a while at a track day. Where you'll crash anyway.
And that's the impression that stays with you as you walk away from the XF. You can argue with the looks of the thing, but you can't with the way it makes you feel.
Heroic? I've been trying to think of a better word but, yeah, it's something like that.
Source: Top Gear