Features

Whenever and wherever the conversation turns to the Jaguar XF, it's all about the design. Even today, when we show up to drive the thing, the talk begins with the shape of the sheet metal, and the furnishings within.

I won't dwell on it though, save to say two things. First, it looks terrific on the road. Seeing it in pictures and at motor shows, I was tempted to judge the nose as slightly overworked, and the tail as slightly over-subtle. But actually that's the right way to go.

Consider: if a car comes the other way, you see its face go by in a handful of seconds. The only time you get the chance to study a car at length on the road is when you're following it, either directly or in an adjacent motorway lane. This means the frontal aspect has to be assertive to make a quick impression, while the rear end can be more subtle but has to be flawless.

The second thing is that, for what it's worth, I really fancy myself in an XF. And I don't actually like saloons. Four-doors are simply too grown-up and establishment for the person I romantically picture myself to be, and I could never see myself in any of XF's rivals. But somehow Ian Callum's new car avoids that stigma. I reckon people who don't like establishment cars will still be able to imagine themselves into this Jaguar.

And that is a gigantic leap from the company associated with the fusty-looking S-Type and X-Type. Indeed, gigantic might be too small a word.

OK, that's out of the way then. Let's drive. Mind you, another reason the conversation hasn't gone too far beyond the design so far is that the mechanical bits are pretty much as per Jaguar's familiar stuff. This is absolutely no bad thing.

The XF V8 S/C's supercharged 4.2-litre engine and six-speed autobox are out of the delightful XKR. The suspension is very closely related. What the XF team did was take these elements and calibrate them and finesse them for the strong new saloon body.

Oh, and they added a little fairy dust too. It's called the JaguarDrive transmission selector. It's a fist-sized cylinder that starts flush with the centre console and rises a couple of inches when you start the engine. Of course this rising cylinder invites a range of similes.

Phallic arousal? A missile out of its stack? All sounds a bit toe-curlingly aggressive, but really it's more like a muffin or little soufflé arriving at done-ness. Anyway, you twist the drum through R and N and D and D-sport, instead of moving forward and aft.

It's a small wrist-flick movement, because it's by-wire control for the six-speed auto. For over-ride, every XF - even the diesel - has steering-wheel paddles.

I don't usually make such a fuss of the transmission, but there you are, this control solution is one of the XF's main novelties. And the way the engine and box co-operate to get the best out of each other is one of the car's several dynamic stand-outs, too.

That's the thing about using familiar components: the Jag guys clearly know how to wring the best from them. The automatic changes seem to happen pretty much when you want them.

The paddle-shifts happen fast and fusslessly too. Best of all, they're nearly always blissfully smooth, up or down, and then the lock-up clutch proceeds to engage, giving you proper connection from throttle to road.

On the supercharged car, there's also a button with a chequered flag on it. Press this and the shifts get slightly quicker, the throttle response becomes wonderfully zingy, the adaptive damping gets a little more aggressive and the stability control loosens its grip somewhat. And the matrix display in the instruments turns itself over entirely to a big gear-number display that turns orange as you get near the red line. The engineers were having fun with this car.