Across the world editors of car magazines and websites anxiously flick their gaze left and right. The sound of V6 and V8 F-Types has long since ebbed, leaving a tense silence. Fingers twitch, not at the handles of six-shooters but on the 'publish' buttons on website content management systems. Yes, the embargo for unleashing those F-Type roadtests draws near. And as yet nobody seems to have cracked.
Yes, yes, but what's it like to drive? Not long...
The F-Types have been driven, compared against rivals and, in the case of one magazine, crashed into a wall in North Wales. Copy has been filed and the world waits while tension builds in newsrooms across the world. Who got the best sideways shot? Is my
Mike Cross anecdote
up to scratch? Have I got enough superlatives left to last me the rest of the year? There is that GT3 roadtest to consider after all...
But as the climax to one of the most concerted pre-launch hype campaigns of recent years draws near to its climax Jaguar can't resist eking out the tension just a little bit longer, boss Adrian Hallmark popping up to offer F-Type soundbites of varying credibility ranging from whether or not there'll be a coupe to, bizarrely, considerations about a four-wheel drive version. The former is likely, the latter technically possible with the V6 engine apparently.
Expectations high? Just slightly...
Considering how jumpy Jaguar got with us when fabulously named development man Erol Mustafa
appeared to confirm
a coupe was coming during our time in the passenger seat it'd now seem the, er, cat is out of the bag on this one. Hallmark has been quoted as saying "everything you could imagine we have imagined too", going on to say "the foundations are there" with relation to a coupe version. He's also been busy bolstering pre-sales hype by saying production will be capped due to the complexity of building the aluminium clamshell bonnet limiting numbers. The theoretical limit is apparently 15,000 cars per year once fully up to speed, half of 2013's expected production already accounted for.
Be warned though, if your tolerance level for F-Type hype is already reaching its limit there's a whole lot more to come in the next 24 hours. Fear not though - there is life beyond Jaguar, Chris Harris's video tomorrow promising to be a cracker and without an F-Type in sight.