OTTAWA, Ont. – You know that there’s something different when you start getting the thumbs up from teenagers. Jaguar sedans are, after all, supposed to appeal to the smoking jacket set. Yet here I am getting full props from a teenager barely out of zits driving something rusted and slammed who probably couldn’t afford to change the XFR-S’s brake pads. But Jaguars haven’t been cool for so long that I am pretty sure that owners — and the company — are happy for acknowledgement no matter their source.
I suspect that, in the case of my specific Young Turk at least, that the accolade has little to do with the XFR-S being a Jag; indeed, now that the leaping feline is absent from the front bonnet, there’s nothing to immediately identify the swoopy sedan as very Teddy. But it does have all manner of swashbuckling fender flairs, hood bulges, NACA air scoop and Pirelli PZeros the size of manhole covers. And then there’s that huge rear carbon-fibred wing, surely a gaucherie that would have Sir William Lyon turning over in his grave (but obviously appealing to my new friend in bouncing Civic).
2014 Jaguar XFR-S
Handout, Jaguar
The XFR-S does, however, have 550 horsepower, which, I don’t care how conservative you are about how a car should look, more than makes up for the trunklid’s gauche appendage. It’s supercharged horsepower too which means a) there’s no waiting around for the turbocharger to get over its lag and b) there’s enough low-end torque (502 pound-feet in fact) to peel pavement as well as rubber.
But most glorious of all, there’s that most wicked of exhaust music. This is Jaguar meets NASCAR, an XF sedan that thinks it was designed for bracket racing. It booms every time you touch the throttle, snarls when the rev counter spins past 5,000 rpm and, best of all, spits, pops and barks on over-run like it’s coming off the high banks of Daytona. Jag’s 5.0-litre may not be able to match the 458 V8’s for the frequency of its internal combusting, but is certainly its equal in amplitude.
2014 Jaguar XFR-S
Handout, Jaguar
The price to be paid for all this seriousness is a little deterioration of Jaguar’s traditional cossetting ride; the XFR-S doesn’t bound over potholes with quite the same jar as, say, an AMG’ed Mercedes but neither is it an XJ; let that giant wing serve as warning to all. That said, the XFR-S handles racetrack speeds with amazing aplomb and is more than capable of carving corners with other performance sedans. Indeed, despite only having a five kilogram advantage (its weighs 1985 kg) over BMW’s M5, it handles like a much lighter car, with none of the ponderousness that plagues the performance Bimmer. That said, the best thing Jaguar could do for the XFR-S (heck, the entire XF lineup) would be to apply its aluminum chassis magic and dump about 250 kilos from its curb weight.
That said, the XFR-S impresses. It’s more than amply fast, handles a treat and still retains Jaguar’s typically cozy interior. It will also, in a first for a recent Jaguar sedan, impress the hell out of your pimply, teenage son. Small blessings perhaps, but considering how unhip Jaguars have been of late, a blessing nonetheless.
2014 Jaguar XFR-S
Handout, Jaguar
