Jaguar has confirmed the F-Type will take its production ready debut at the Paris show at the end of September. A decision we expected but riles our purist streak for admittedly sentimental reasons.
Pre-debut teasing campaign well under way
The F-Type is the spiritual successor to the E-Type, so we're told - but the E-Type made its 1961 debut at the Geneva Motor Show. Come on guys, what about a bit of historical resonance here?
Oh, forget it. Especially since the F-Type is mooted to appear as a convertible first, whereas a last minute decision saw a switch to the coupé for the original E-Type reveal. Given Ian Callum has already stated that modern Jaguar is doing its own thing here, we probably won't be seeing any shipping crates, either...*
Anyway, before this descends too far into the depths of pointless geekery let's talk engines. Meaty, supercharged, multi-cylinder engines.
Shape has been teased - see it undisguised soon
There's no hint of any four-pot downsizing nonsense for this Jag just yet. The smallest motor confirmed for the F-Type is an
all-new 3.0-litre petrol V6
- with a supercharger. It will come in 340hp and 380hp guises.
That's obviously not enough to be irritating the Porsche Cayman with, however, so Jaguar is also dropping in a revised version of its supercharged 5.0-litre V8. 500hp ought to be enough.
Every motor feeds the rear wheels via an eight-speed gearbox. The nod to eco consciousness comes from the standard stop-start system.
As well as all the physical testing, Jaguar is playing up the virtual evaluation - suggesting no fewer than half a million parameters have been digitally assessed. Gladly the fine-tuning is firmly fixed in the real world, with the chassis engineers aiming for not just "great" but "exceptional".
* Geekery time: the very first public unveil of the Jaguar E-Type took place at a restaurant in Geneva on the night before the 1961 show, and involved a crane lifting a shipping crate to reveal the car - unusually dramatic for the time. That very car is currently on display at the V&A museum, but be quick as the exhibition ends on Sunday 12 August.