You make a very good point there, Doug. Yes, "breaking traction was the antithesis of what an experienced high performance driver wants to acheive".

I love imagining what my next purchase would be but, frankly, my practical mindset is telling me that I do not want a car with 500HP and 500lbs of torque. It is just about completely useless for street driving and, I am done with taking street cars to the tracks. In my 5.0 NA XJL or XF, I find the 385HP V8 totally sufficient for even the fastest driving that most sane person would ever attempt on the streets. At this point I would be reasonably tempted to get either a V6 F-type or a 5.0 NA XK and simply work on the suspension. I think the XK with its tuned suspension would be a good compromise. Plenty of power for most use, good handling, great looks and decent fuel economy.

Having said that, don't ask me tomorrow what I want next, as it may be totally different but, I never thought I would say this; I am kind of being turned off by the really high powered, high torque engines for street applications.

Edit: as to the continuing comparison as in the title of this thread; the local Chevy dealer called me yesterday, saying that he had a couple of '14 Stringrays in stock, finally. So, if he still have them tomorrow when I will be in town, I'll stop by, look and perhaps drive one of them.

Albert

 

I guess anything above the most basic car that reasonably meets one's requirements is all about want and not need. No one really needs a 385 hp car any more than they need a 500hp or more vehicle. We get these cars because we can, we just all draw the line at a different place. Is one already excessive choice any more or less valid than an arguably more excessive one? I'm just glad manufacturers like Jaguar continue to sell these cars and offer the choices that they do.

 

"We get these cars because we can..."

Exactly right and we are so lucky to be in this position.

 

I've had opportunity to drive many really high powered cars. I'm not an expert driver and there are very few road/traffic opportunties to safely use the power. Having 500 hp on tap but having to short shift 90% of the time is actually frustrating.
.

OTOH......

I can jump into, let's say, a 300hp C4 Corvette or older 911 and enjoy *really running it thru the gears* and giving it a good workout.

One of the most thoroughly fun cars I've ever driven is an old 246 Dino with just 190 horsepower!

Cheers
DD

 

Bruce,

You may be right, as only recently i started watching his videos.

It really depends on what you are looking for in a car. He recently did another comparison with the E63 AMG, XF-RS and M6 Grand Coupe'. All he did in the entire video was drift the cars and talk about the steering in each car. It's great to talk about the steering while he is drifting at 90mph, but i want to know about the steering when the car is going at that speed around a corner all four tires in sync.

One of my favorite reviewers on the Motortrend team is Jonny Liberman. He is very very thorough in this reviews. They will take the cars and put them on Dnyo, drive on mountain roads etc. Just watching his videos i learn so much about the car as if i had been driving it.

For me personally it's about the dynamics between the driver and the road. And, more importantly the performance of these cars.

Take a look at this video and let me know what you think in comparison to Harris' reviews.




I would hate to disagree with you, but you will be surprised how much affect it has on people.

 

 

Have to say I like both Johnny Lierberman's reviews and Chris Harris'. I think they both do great work. Chris has a particular style, but he tells it like he sees it. I've followed his work for years at Evo and other places (Evo for me being the best auto magazine by a country mile). He's the only journalist I can recall with a big enough pair to call out Ferrari for what he considered to be somewhat questionable practices around how their cars were reviewed and tested. For the longest time afterwards, Ferrari wouldn't let him review their cars. For someone in his profession, that took some *****.

How Ferrari Spins

 

I've seen pro driver Randy Pobst in a few reviews and enjoy his reaction. He seems to love what he does and provides some interesting insight.


Instead of watching these guys continue to do drifts around turns why don't they give some useful insight into how the car handles, performs, feels and costs.

 

Absolutely agree!

One of the cars I was really thinking of buying before I decided to get my XKR was a Mazda RX-8. Talk about a fun to drive torqueless but high-revving car!

 

There is a charm to rotaries. I have had them for the street and raced them for decades. Superb racing engines! I would not say that they are "torqueless" just that they have a different and rather narrow power band, particularly when modified. My usual way of introducing my 500HP street RX-7 to unsuspecting people is to take them out and start gradually picking up speed. Just when they get comfortable in the deep racing seat thinking that they had experienced the real speeds of the car, I downshift to get the engine to 4500 RPM to spool up the big twin turbos and step on it. The effect is as if an explosion occurred, tossing people against the back of their seat violently, never failing to elicit some exasperated vocal response (...SHiiiiT!!!...) plus flailing arms and heads Just lovely.

Of course, the downside of a souped up rotary that they just don't last like piston engines do. But, they are simple and cheap to rebuild.

Albert

 

While the vast majority of the reviews and comparisons of the F-type to other cars have been quite complimentary, and I'm sure I've read or heard every one of them. I can't help but get the feeling from a number of reviewers that because the F-type is not the best in every single category, it can't be so good. Jaguar comes out with its first sports car in 5 decades, and right out of the box it seems to be a requirement that it trounce Porsche 911s, Aston Martins, Audi R8s....all of which are much more expensive and certainly don't dominate in every category. The Tiff Needell review is, for me, particularly troubling. He announces early in the video that this is the first time he has been behind the wheel of the F-type (as opposed to the thousands of times in the 911.) I am, by no means, a great track driver, not even a good one, but did anyone watching that video think that he drove the F-type to its maximum potential, swingin' the rear end out on nearly every turn, smokin' the tires on every turn, driving about as "unsmoothly" as possible, and then proclaiming the F-type was 3 seconds slower and clearly inferior.

First of all, I don't think anyone could get a feel of a car's capabilities and how to exploit its strengths after 1.5 minutes of driving it for the very first time, yet, this is exactly what Needell has done. Secondly, who cares?! Very few F-type owners (as well as 911 owners) are ever going to have their cars on a track, especially as a convertible. They want a supremely confident, luxurious, great handling and driving car that has killer looks (the F-type certainly winning that comparison to the Porsche) and great capability. The F-type doesn't have to be the world's best sports car to be extremely desirable.

Another interesting note on Needell's comparison, I understand he was comparing cars with similar horsepower, but not similar pricing. He didn't use the V-8S, still much less expensive but at least within range of the 911 cabriolet, he chose the V-6S, similar hp but nearly $40,000 less expensive.
Had Mr. Needell compared the new Corvette vs. the Porsche, the Porsche would have come out on the short end and the Vette is half the price.

The F-type is a great new car that won't take 50 years to develop its potential as the 911 has. Already with the F-type Coupe R we are seeing advances that will have significantly improved performance within the first year (torque vectoring, Carbon Ceramic brakes among others).

The reviewers that love the F-type, do so because of all of its virtues and they celebrate them; they don't waste time wondering if it's the world's greatest.

 

CNN just showed a huge sink hole under the corvette museum with several rare corvettes swallowed up.

 

rare as in down to the last "50,000" of them ....

 

Yet another test where they rank the exhaust and fun factor at the top... with one other

 

Another Stingray / F-Type comparo... .

Jaguar put together a great package with the F-Type. Reviewers often refer to it as a GT, and that's one indication that they went a little heavy on luxury and weight for the market they claim to target. Shedding a half dozen power seat motors and such could help trim the weight it needs to if it wants to better compete for fun and performance, and should be able to do that while maintaining its elegance and relative exclusivity.

 

But what is Jaguar's target market? The F Type isn't trying to be a hard core sports car and the F Type isn't a classic GT. To my mind Jaguar intended this car to be a hybrid of both, and I think they largely succeeded. These aren't cars for the casual buyer, they are relatively high end toys for the relatively well off and my own sense is that the majority of buyers of 100k cars by and large don't want stripped down cars with manual seats, no A/C and cloth strips for door handles. Those that do can find that elsewhere but I don't think Jaguar is really intending to target that demographic with this particular car.

 

I believe that Jaguar had Porsche owners squarely in its sights (as well as the Porsche business model) when it conceived the F-type. And I believe it has largely succeeded but is not done yet. I would bet that within a couple of years the F-type will have evolved into an even more potent sports car that will more than hold its own with every version of the 911, Cayman, and Boxter, and at more than competitive pricing. Jaguar has already said that there will me more versions to come including R-GT high performance versions (as if 495 and 550 horsepower versions aren't high performance enough). The fact that the F-type is even mentioned in the same breath as such premium sports cars as the 911, the Audi R-8, or any of the Aston Martins (let alone exceeding them in many reviewers' minds) is testament to how successful this new effort is. I think that in a couple of years, the German automakers will be playing catch-up rather than the other way around.

 

Of course I wasn't suggesting completely stripping it out, but they could likely take 300-400 pounds out of the car that noone would even notice...except in improved driving dynamics. Modern engineering and materials have allowed all or most of its competitors to keep weight lower, and doing the same would improve the F-Type.

Bruce

 

The thing is, though, many if not most of the comparison tests that are getting posted are comparing the convertible F Type to the coupe versions of the 911, Vantage, R8 and Corvette etc. Not exactly the most apples to apples comparisons. Not that the F Type isn't acquitting itself very well in most of the tests, but they ought it be comparing like with like.

 

And on a somewhat related note, a beautiful R8 V10 was parked close to my car in my office building today. The driver started up and drove off when I was getting something out of the trunk and, even allowing for the biases of ownership, I have to say my F Type to my ears has a much better exhaust note when starting and accelerating. I personally think the R8 V8 has a nice exhaust note, but again I think the F has it beat.