As tantalising as first tastes of a new car go, this one whets the appetite as much as the sound of a cold can of Coke opening on a scorching hot day in the desert.
Ah, sound. For this is what this story really boils down to. We’re in Manhattan, New York City for a first blast in the all-new Jaguar F-Type SVR, the fastest and most powerful regular production Jaguar ever. In a tunnel. At night.
Read our Jaguar F-Type SVR review here
The F-Type SVR, in case you need reminding, is the 567bhp 5.0-litre supercharged V8, four-wheel drive version of the Jaguar F-Type. Due to reach the UK this summer, it’s the son of the strictly limited Project 7 special edition from 2014, which showed just how far the F-Type could be pushed as an extreme performance product.
The F-Type SVR, the work of Jaguar Land Rover’s rapidly ascending Special Vehicle Operations division that also produced Project 7 and the Range Rover Sport SVR, is the slightly more sane and usable follow-up to Project 7, but soft it is not.
Based on the F-Type R AWD, in coupe form the F-Type SVR will send you from 0-62mph in just 3.7sec and on to a 200mph top speed. The performance makeover on an already very performance focussed product is thorough, with lots of extra cooling and aerodynamic additions to help maximise that extra performance, and a chassis makeover to help the car fly around a circuit, but tuned in a very Jaguar way to ensure it remains compliant and usable every day.
And then there is the exhaust system, which is perhaps most relevant here. It’s a lightweight titanium and Inconel exhaust that weighs some 16kg less than the F-Type R AWD’s, and has lots of trickery to give what Jaguar claims is a “dramatic, purposeful, harder-edge exhaust note”. And, as with the F-Type R AWD, the ‘naughty button’ remains available to the driver, a picture of an exhaust on the centre console that when pressed and activated sends the exhaust into the full aural beans mode.
Jaguar has pulled a lot of strings to have the tunnel shut down for five hours on the eve of the New York motor show. The tunnel is on Park Avenue, and runs for 422 metres between 33rd and 38th street. The speed limit has been raised from 25mph to 65mph for the evening, but we haven’t spied any speed cameras in the tunnel…
A passenger ride is up first in one direction, and it’s the slightly slower (at 194mph, still) convertible version of the F-Type SVR we’re in, with the roof down, of course, to best hear that noise.
So that noise, then. It’s brilliant. It’s lovely. It’s really bloody loud. It’s the volume that those old speakers you used to have would always distort at if you tried to turn it up to them. It gets inside you like the party your neighbour had until 2am with vibrations coming through the wall. And above all, it’s the type of noise that reminds you just how great it can be when a car launches a full-on assault on one of your senses. That’s all before you get the pops and crackles when lifting off. You might be able to tell I quite liked it.
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The future is.......
I cannot understand why you are even on this site ?!?!
It will be quiet enough when we are in our coffins.....so live a little and long live Jag and such like !!
darkvader666 wrote: ......so
I don't have anything against the article, as pointless as it is. I enjoy the noise from a car. The point I made is the noise from the F Type is ridiculous, it is antisocial, completely over the top and false. It is also such a shame that JLR's products do seem to attract the tossers of society. You see them all the time, the XF, RR glued to your rear bumper. Tracksuit wearing w'nkers in RR Sports, cheap lease deals and the working classes having too much disposable monthly income is to blame. That said my wife has an F - Pace on order but she's neither overweight or orange but she is German and grew up in Dresden under the GDR, she believes Jaguars are cool so I cannot forgive her entirely.
I don't recall people making so much fuss
Seriously, people are getting
I guess people didn't read the bit about this being on the even of the NY Auto Show. It is possible, just possible, that these journalists might have been in NY anyway...
I take the point about disclosure, but US laws require full sponsorship disclosure on media such as YouTube (even if most publishers don't adhere to this). Autocar, being US based (Jalopnik is US) doesn't have any such law to adhere to, but it is certainly good practise.
@zadster