Features

Jaguar's supercharged V8 has lost its tiresome whining noise. Floor it in the XF, and there's a deep, smoothly rounded sound and, with it, a pretty serious, though not violent, kick forward. This steel-bodied XF is 200-odd kilos heavier than an aluminium XKR, so it's not supercar-fast, but it doesn't hang about. Jaguar says it'll get to 62mph in 5.4 seconds. I believe them.

Just as a car this big and heavy makes demands on the engine, you feel - when you're hauling down from big speeds - that the brakes have got a job on their hands. The pedal needs a lot of shove and gets very slightly spongy.

And yet here's a weird and rather magical thing, another of the shining attributes of the car: if, when accelerating or braking, you always feel its weight, when you arrive at a tight corner - better still a series of them, with challenging dips and crests thrown in - much of the weight seems to disappear. The front end swings eagerly into a bend. Body roll is amazingly well contained.

Despite the steering's light-ish weight and the huge 255/35 20 tyres, there's useful feel through the wheel as well as absolutely terrific accuracy and progression.

You can really lean on the car and get the sense of the front and rear ends sharing the load to best effect. There's also bags of traction for a swift, sure exit. And if you do get it a bit loose at the back, it can be gathered up as neatly as you'd hope.

One tiny, odd thing though. On really fast sweeping corners, the kind you get on a continental motorway swinging down the side of a mountain range, a little after you've turned in, the back end just squats outward a fraction. But then it settles immediately and you're good to go.

And on the back of this terrific handling has arrived another miracle. The ride is sublime and so is the quietness of the suspension and tyres, even on the S/C's standard 20-inch hoops. OK, things can get a fraction bobbly at town speeds, but it flattens out amazingly above, say, 40-50mph.

Straight-line stability is remarkable, given the agility through bends. At a cruise, as in town, the engine noise dies away nicely, and wind roar isn't an issue, even at really big speeds. Time to deploy the iPod (and USB and Aux-in) audio inputs, which in the case of the test car fed a gorgeous Bowers & Wilkins multi-channel audio.

Though the windscreen and rear screen angles are exactly as low as on the XK, you get decent space in the back and a huge boot, albeit reached though a small opening. But, heck, this shouldn't be a car judged on these dreary practicalities, it should be about wanting to luxuriate in the gorgeous design.

Oddly, there's as much wood and leather as in any Jaguar before, but this place gives lie to the notion that they imply 'traditional'. Everything, from the shapes of the dash to the textures, stitching and the ice-blue ambient lighting down to the radii of the oblong switch-surrounds, it all says 21st century.

And there's fun. The magic gear-selector is just a fraction of the 'handshake' start-up procedure. Get in, and the start button backlight pulses a red heartbeat. Press it, and the selector awakes. Then the dash air vents, hidden when parked, motor into position. The interior lights have no switches. All you need to do is vaguely stroke them, and they understand.