Refined Rowdiness: The Smoking Tire Drives the F-Type SVR

More horsepower, more drive wheels, and less weight means this may very well become a modern Jaguar classic.

If it’s not quite a classic like its alphabetic cousin, the E-Type, the modern F-Type may very well be the car that saves Jaguar. And this version, the F-Type SVR, could be a definitive version. Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire takes it for a spin in this “One Take” video.

The SVR includes the F-Type’s hallmark: a kickass musical sound. Like Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 or Holst’s The Planets Suite, the supercharged V8 produces a brutally pleasant set of tones. If one were composing a piece of modern classical music using, say, cars’ exhaust notes, including this F-Type be like dropping in the guitar sound from Black Sabbath.

That V8 isn’t all bark, either. The 5.0-liter, dual-overhead-cam V8 generates 575 peak horsepower with help from a Roots supercharger. That makes it second only to the XE Project 8 in terms of most Jaguar horsepower ever.

To improve performance further, Jaguar put this cat on a diet. They chipped pounds off using lighter wheels, suspension, exhaust, and more. While it still weighs 3,700 pounds, the F-Type SVR should still reach 60 miles per hour in about 3.0 seconds. The two-wheel drive F-Type with less power and more weight ran 3.1 seconds, after all. This F-Type features all-wheel drive and an eight-speed ZF gearbox.

The suspension helps Farah rip around the canyon roads while the carbon-ceramic brakes keep him from flying into the canyons. The brakes do take a few stops to reach ideal operating temperature, but they slow the big cat fantastically once they get heat in them.

Altogether, the SVR makes for all of the F-Type superlatives: most powerful and fastest, sure. However, “most expensive” adds to the list. As tested, this one runs about $130,000. We might be a little biased, but we think this’ll be a classic.