2007 Jaguar XKR Review

Specifications

Call me a panty-wearing, purse-toting sissy, but I would stand in line to get told what and when to do and think for this ride. I’m talking about the Jaguar XKR, and the most difficult thing about living with this car for a week was not making too many sexual innuendos in this review. Yeah, it’s a car, but if ever a car screamed “SEX!”, you’re looking at it. This is one hot car, and I’m having a hell of a time just trying to keep this review PG.

Anyhow, it all came to a head one afternoon when I pulled up at a gas pump feeding the kitty premium juice, and a hip, stylish man driving an affordable family minivan stopped cold, looked over and summed it up perfectly. “Nice Whip.” Well, thanks, and when I have the opportunity I’ll pass those compliments on to Ian Callum, the Jaguar design team and the Jaguar marketing and production people who put this wicked, sinful feast for the senses on the road in as lust-inducing a form as they have.

It doesn’t take a connoisseur or an automotive aficionado to appreciate this beauty, and anyone within earshot can be excused for getting a little weak in the knees whenever the engine is turned over or the throttle generously applied, gratuitously hacking up furballs while idling at streetlights or when rolling down the ramp in neutral at the underground garage at work. If not for the body-hugging leather seats in which I was ensconced, I likely would have set a record for clumsy stumbles in a week. There’s something just a little dirty to the stutter in this cat’s growl, perfectly rattling the more primal hormone-producing areas of my nervous system.

Seeing as how this review could start to get ugly real quick, perhaps I should start talking about the features with which this modern cat pampers its occupants. First of all, it includes one of the most intuitive, clearly laid out and simple-to-use car-systems interfaces. From adjusting the radio stations to setting the desired temperature for occupants or connecting a Bluetooth phone to plotting a course on the navigation system via its touch screen interface, most menus were simple to understand at a glance and easily accessed, backwards and forwards. The only drawback was that the touch screen still requires visual contact, which means you have to look away from the road in order to control certain car functions, a procedure that should be, but rarely is, undertaken only after parking the car at the side of the road. Parking the Jag is a snap thanks to parking sensors that use glowing color bars around a diagram of the car to represent objects you are approaching. One frustration is that it shuts off immediately after shifting out of reverse … it would have been helpful if it stayed on during quick see-saw adventures in parallel parking.

However, despite little niggling annoyances with the car functions, the biggest disappointment was some of the trim on this $90K car. I rarely harp on interior materials because you generally get what you pay for, but two areas in particular caught my attention and incited my ire and constant picking (both physical and the nit- variety). The steering wheel’s spokes, a point of constant contact for the primary occupant, were banded with fairly cheap and disgracefully assembled plastic. For over $90K, somebody should search the coffers for a little extra budget for some aluminum trim, and be damn sure that it is fastened without leaving huge gaps right where fingers fall when grasping the steering wheel at the optimal 3 and 9 o’clock hand positions. A lesser irritant, but nonetheless one I found embarrassing, was the peeling chrome trim on the shifter gate - on a car with less than 3,000 miles and only one previous journalist (albeit a disgraceful one judging from the parking in a handicap-designated spot ticket he left behind) having been at the wheel.

Those were two minor irritants in a car that, when taking the larger view of man’s relationship with the elemental machine, is nearly flawless in my opinion. From here on out in the review, it will only be unabashed praise and adulation. It is downright perfect when examined from every angle, the lower front splitter and mesh grille insert of the R trim adding further menace to a car whose gorgeous curves can only be matched by exotics commanding double the price. Audi’s R8 might get a whole lot more attention, but it isn’t nearly as purely “beautiful” in its harsh, technical mastery. The XK teases with curves and tantalizes with creases, tempting the mind to think of the iconic leaper as interpreted overlaid on an aluminum chassis and four alloy wheels that pad as lightly as its namesake. Flanks that draw me in, headlights like eyes that captivate, and a neatly tucked rear diffuser and twin tailpipes that beckon me to keep turning the car over and over in my mind, it’s a body that is more love letter than design, and I can’t stop reading it over and over again.

And while the body is as lustrous as prose can get, the car quickly turns prose to poetry when you bring motion into the story. The epic sounds of the engine barking to life I’ve already mentioned, but from the minute the car rolls into the street, the wide wheels, low-profile performance rubber and aluminum suspension and chassis communicate the lay of the road while the light, effortless steering still manages to parley the front wheels’ actions with precision and deftness. It’s not a car for ham-fisted brutes that crave a good pounding to let them know they’re getting somewhere; rather it dances with the grace and aplomb of a ballroom master without any unnecessary jarring on rough roads. Granted, the stiffness of chassis and suspension mean you can catch the rear wheels losing the ground for a fraction, but the car is so utterly controllable that you’d have to be willfully aiming for a ditch to find one. At those extremes, Jaguar’s stability control will come to the driver’s aid as it can only be partially deactivated, coming back at the flick of a tail that is too far out of character.

Although really, despite its sporting ability, it’s a car that won’t likely see much track time or be driven too mercilessly on far flung country roads. For this reason I, personally would be more than satisfied with the more modest XK convertible, though preferably in a more extroverted shade, like the Radiance (red) metallic one we sampled last summer. Both offer the same lightweight 4.2-liter aluminum V8 with variable valve timing, though the XKR’s supercharger boosts horsepower from a respectable 300 to a downright indulgent 420, and torque from 303 lb-ft to a gut-twisting 413, not to mention the stiffening of suspension, tweaking of steering response and recalibration of the Computer Active Technology Suspension (CATS is Jaguar’s cleverly named adaptive damping system that adjusts damper reactions to create the optimum balance between ride and handling).

Call me simple, but the XK convertible is just fine thank you very much. You may even think I missed the point of reviewing this car, glossing over the technical achievement in its self-bonding riveted aluminum chassis, incredible torsional rigidity or incredible power-to weight ratio, but the XKR just made me want to bask in the flash of paparazzi bulbs and perhaps run over a homeless person because I felt like the world was suddenly my $10,000 dollar a day personal assistant and it was the world’s less fortunate job of getting out of my way. I just felt special, and perhaps just a little super-special for wearing the mesh grille and R badge.

Then again, the kind of on-the-edge driving you’d have to entertain in order to extract the R’s performance improvements really didn’t cross my mind. Sure I floored it leaving stoplights and goosed it a little coming out of corners, but the same fun can be had in the XK with only a few percentage points lost in the volume of the exhaust and the tightening of the steering. Mind you, the upgrade from XK to XKR is a rather insignificant $11,000, so it’s not really much of a stretch once you’re spending that kind of money on a seasonal car, but even if you’re Richard Branson, I’m sure you could find somewhere to spend that $11,000 … maybe a nice bottle of wine or a night at a fine hotel or staging some elaborate publicity stunt. Hey, why not pamper yourself? You and your cat deserve it.