2024 Jaguar F-Type 75 and 75 R are sports cars for the ages

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Sixty-five million years ago, the Iberian tectonic plate crashed into Eurasia, buckling and lifting the sedimentary rock of ancient ocean beds into the sky. When humans arrived, early mountaineers were followed by engineers, boring holes through the living stone, and draping ribbons of wriggling tarmac up the steep slopes. A great deal of effort – but all worth it as a pair of supercharged V8s roar out their battle cry, surging up the mountain one after the other.

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Endangered Species: Internal combustion sports cars

Big cats in a dogfight: two Jaguars dancing through the switchbacks and shouting in combustion-engined delight as they go. One coupe, one convertible, both of a species that has just been placed on the endangered species list. After 10 years, Jaguar has decreed that its gorgeous F-Type will be drawing to a close. More importantly, and perhaps more shockingly to fans of the snarling cat, these cars are a bookend to history. The 2024 F-Type will be the last of the combustion-engined Jaguar sports cars.

With special anniversary models dubbed the 75 and 75 R, the 2024 F-Type is the end of its breed. Seventy-five years ago, Jaguar launched the first of its sports cars with the XK120, a roadster so-named for the top speed it could achieve in miles per hour. The E-Type took up that gauntlet in 1961, and various sporting Jaguars followed. Largely, the later cars were grand tourers, slightly less hoity-toity than an Aston-Martin, but an equal pleasure to drive. The F-Type wound the clock back.

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Leaner than the XK it replaced, the F-Type was a remarkably combative sports car. Prod the starter on one of the early cars and it would perform a full snap to redline, either with V6 rasp or a throatier V8 thunder. You might as well have thrown a brick through your neighbour’s window when starting out early on a weekend morning.

2024 sees the F-Type matured, but not softened. Both coupe and convertible were facelifted in 2019, and both have aged without losing visual appeal. Like its XK forebears, the F-Type is the sort of car that will still look good in 2033, even if its piston-engine powertrain won’t be able to match the power delivery of some theoretical big battery and multiple electric motors.

Evolution: 2024 Jaguar F-Type Updates

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For the Canadian market, the F-Type’s powertrain is streamlined for the 2024 model year. The sole choice of engine is a supercharged 5.0L V8, producing either 444 hp in the P450 version, or 575 hp in the P575. An eight-speed automatic transmission directs this power to the ground through standard all-wheel-drive. In the US market, a rear-wheel-drive F-Type is still available, but Canadian Jags will claw the tarmac with all four wheels.

This is a slight shame, as a rear-drive P450 is a highly entertaining machine, and closest to the sporting Jaguar ideal of an XK120 or E-Type. Jaguar notes mild revisions to the suspension aimed at improving steering feel, and the effect is more noticeable in the RWD model. You make slight adjustments mid-corner with your wrists, and the F-Type responds with a delightfully lively nature.

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Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the P450 models driven here in the Spanish alpine were the convertible version. Whether coupe or convertible version of the F-Type is prettier is the sort of tricky beauty contest that was once posed to young Paris of Troy; and that ended up with the ancient Greeks sacking his city. You’ll have to pick your own favourite to award the mythical golden apple to. But if the coupe is slightly more practical, the convertible F-Type can’t be matched as a front seat to one of the last great V8 concertos.

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In an electric future, cars will programmed to sound like everything from a Le Mans racer to a TIE Fighter, or nothing at all. If you are the neighbour of a fellow who owns a 2014 F-Type V6 and has a commute that starts at 5 a.m., you may have little problem with the “nothing at all” choice.

But a sports car is supposed to be an emotional choice, and the F-Type makes its case by sounding as good as it looks. The Pyrenees mountains are riddled with stone-walled tunnels, and when passing through them it’s difficult to suppress the urge to flick the F-Type’s drive-mode toggle switch into dynamic and let the V8 bellow its barbaric yawp. More than difficult, it’s impossible to resist.

But sound and raw speed alone do not make a Jaguar – that’s more the Dodge Hellcat’s territory. A proper sporting Jag should have grace to go with its pace, and if you push the F-Type P575 into really challenging switchbacks, its composure comes a little unbuttoned. The car’s brake-based torque vectoring hauls in the reins on those 575 horses, rather than directing them where they would work best, as a more clever rear differential might do. Overall, the P575 outgrips the P450, but it does not out-fun it. The steering of the all-wheel-drive model is just that little bit less sweet than the rear-drive version, and there’s the sense that something like a Porsche Boxster GTS would be handily able to outrun a P575 in highly technical conditions, despite being 180 hp down on power.

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But where the road has better flow, so do both variants of F-Type, slicing through sweeping corners with grip and poise. The F-Type properly lives up to Jaguar heritage here, and we took a trip down memory lane by tracking down an original XK120.

Origin of the Species: 1954 Jaguar XK120

Launched at the London Motor Show in 1948, the XK120 marked the beginning of Jaguar’s sports car history, and it did so with a slight understatement. As mentioned above, the car’s designation was a reference to its top speed: 120 mph or 193 km/h, fleet enough to hold the title as the fastest production car in the world at the time. In reality, the XK120 could crack on to over 130 mph (210 kph), assuming the driver at the wheel was brave enough.

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This example is a 1954 XK120 Drophead Coupe, a later convertible version – early XK120s were roadsters first, then hardtop coupes. Owned since the mid-1980s by current owner Stephen Plunkett, it was lovingly stored for decades until a proper restoration could be funded. Decades ago, this car was a pretty un-Jaguar-like Corvette yellow with red vinyl seats. Now it’s a much more elegant deep grey, akin to  the 1949 XK120 Roadster owned by Clark Gable.

When new, a Jaguar sports car was a much more reasonable proposition than a contemporary Aston Martin. However, the performance from a 3.4L straight-six engine spoke for itself and attracted many well-heeled buyers like Gable. Humphrey Bogart also owned an X120.

Early on, racing was where Jaguar made a name for itself. XK120s competed at endurance racing events like the 1950 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Special racing prototypes like the C-Type took up the mantle from the XK, but the performance potential from those also flowed back to the road cars. A standard XK120 had roughly 160 hp, but by 1953 you could option a high-performance C-Type head good for 210 hp.

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While an XK120 is today a very valuable car, and restoring one comes at a cost. Plunkett is just the sort of owner you’d hope would have such a well-sorted machine. Not long after restoration, he headed up the Sea-to-Sky highway for a lunch stop in Whistler. Which became a coffee stop in Pemberton. Which turned into a full loop up through Lillooet and down the Fraser Canyon before returning home to the lower mainland, in an entirely unplanned adventure. The Jaguar didn’t miss a beat.

Jokes about Lucas electrics aside, a vintage Jaguar can often reward a mechanically sympathetic owner. This XK120 sings through its straight-six engine, offering plenty of torque, with a four-speed manual handling shifting duties. Drum brakes at all four corners perhaps don’t offer the confidence of disc brakes – later Jaguars adopted disc brake technology early on – but the car offers a far more modern driving experience than prewar cars and even many 1950s contemporaries.

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XK120 production ended in 1954, and it was replaced by the XK140 and XK150 as top speeds rose. Eventually, the XKE (or E-Type) of the 1960s arrived, a lasting icon that would define desirable Jaguars. The E-Type’s first appearance is a case in point in what Jaguar sports cars are all about. On the 15th of March, 1961 Jaguar test drive Norman Dewis received a phone call with unexpected instructions. The then-new E-Type, just revealed at the Geneva Auto Show, was getting too much attention for a single demonstrator model to handle. Dewis was dispatched on a damn-the-torpedoes overnight run from Coventry to the Swiss capital, hammering through Belgium, France, and Germany, arriving in an elapsed time of just 11 hours in an age before GPS and wide, direct motorways. Et voilà, like elves in a shoe store, the next day there were two E-Types for the crowd to adore.

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But before the E-type became an icon admired round the world, the XK120 set the template for all great Jaguar sports cars. It was fast, elegant, and capable of dual duties as both a sports car and grand tourer. As Jaguar celebrates seventy-five years of building sporting excellence, their first effort is not just a footnote of history, but worthy of the nostalgia.

Back to the Future: Capturing the sports car spirit

The P575 coupe feels infused with that spirit of that pell-mell E-Type dash, built to lollop across undulating Spanish roads with eye-widening speed. But the difference in power over the P450 at this Grand Tourer pace is not significantly pronounced over the P575. It should be noted that Jaguar eventually built a V12 version of the E-Type, but the original 4.2L straight-six remains more beloved. Likewise, the P450 makes all the right sounds, picks up its heels when called upon to blitz past a slow-moving articulated truck, and is generally just as satisfying to drive as the P575 90 per cent of the time. The latter is a half-second quicker to 100 km/h, but you’d hardly notice.

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Who did take notice of the P575’s matte-black paint job was the gaggle of Spanish school kids who practically laminated themselves to the back window of a bus as the F-Type closed in on them. They waved and cheered as the Jaguar zipped onwards, which opens up a fresh round of questions.

If this is the end of the combustion-engined Jaguar sports car as we know it, then what takes up its mantle? The F-Type has done well over its tenure, picking up the thread from the XJS and XK coupes and convertibles, cars that filled the grand touring role par excellence, but were perhaps viewed as getting a bit too tweedy. The F-Type blew the cobwebs off of Jaguar’s brand, and opened the door for the likes of the F-Pace SVR. However, at least in the North American market, Land Rover currently provides the lion’s share of JLR’s market capture.

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In the near future, Jaguar is promising an announcement that shows a clear direction forward. Here, with the F-Type, it is closing a door after 75 years. Not surprisingly considering Jaguar’s involvement in Formula-e racing since 2017, a new battery-electric platform is hinted at, with a move even further upscale.

Greater pace is certainly possible, and it’s not like the F-Type has any legacy of space for an EV sports car replacement to live up to; the trunk of the convertible version is particularly small. The question is not whether or not Jaguar will be able to build something as quick as their supercharged-V8 two-seater, but rather whether the company will do what everyone else is doing and create an ultra-quick EV crossover or sedan that will actually fill the order books. Sure, the combustion engine is on its slow exit out the door, but the sports car is a niche segment that’s disappearing even faster.

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But before Jaguar draws a curtain across its seventy-five years of combustion-powered sports cars, be it resolved that the F-Type is going out with the required bang. It’s not a perfect machine: not as ruthlessly polished as some of its German rivals, hardly practical, not the most technologically advanced offering.

But few companies do old school firepower like Jaguar. In the future, Coventry will have to figure out what the next steps are. In the present, the thunder of two supercharged V8s echo across the mountains and down into the valleys, nearing the end of their time, but not willing to go without one last fight.