You’re at the fork in the road. To your left it branches into a broad highway that will get you to your destination quickly, fuel efficiently and relatively stress free.
To your right it narrows and writhes its way through numerous switchbacks, fast sweeps and camber changes. You’re going to be late; it will take all your concentration and empty the fuel tank.
Of course you take the narrow road. Any good Calvinist will tell you that. The narrow twisty one leads to the coolest destination of them all, plus you’re behind the wheel of a Jaguar XFR for heaven’s sake!
Jaguar is back to what they do well: building beautiful fast cars. But they need to convince all those BMW, Audi and Mercedes drivers that theirs is the better way, and that halo cars like the XFR, XKR, the new XJ and the secret XE are the new automotive apostles of their brand.
In our April 2009 edition of Topcar magazine we declared that the XFR had what it takes to beat the BMW M5 and the Audi RS6. After two weeks with the XFR on test, I’ll add an amen to that.

Just a quick confession though. The XFR has to be one of the most entertaining, good looking and user friendly cars I’ve driven all year. The first time I buried the throttle to merge onto the freeway ahead of lethargic traffic, it was like someone had lit the afterburner of a jet fighter. The Jaguar didn’t jump forward, it leaped. Quickly. So quickly it had me audibly shouting things I’d rather not repeat in print.
The weird thing is that there’s very little indication of the beast under the bonnet and the athletic ability under the sheet metal when you approach the car. If you look closely you might get a hint from the liberal use of the word ‘supercharged’ (it’s on every alloy and the two bonnet vents), the R badge on the back, the chrome-framed air intakes, the small spoiler and the four exhaust outlets at the rear. All subtle signs that this is more kat than kit.
Inside it’s the same story. There’s an R badge on the steering wheel and on the facia, plus more supportive sport seats up front. But that’s pretty much it. Even when you press the throbbing Start/Stop button, the 5.0-litre supercharged V8 burbles into life in a non-threatening way. That changes the instant you want to accelerate with any kind of intent. And that’s in normal default drive mode, before you’ve even turned the super-cool cylindrical gear selector to Sport. Or activated the chequered flag switch between the two front seats which reduces the electronic nannies to background noise so you can get all tail happy on a race track.