True, your potent EV powertrain of the premium, Taycan-ish kind that’s coming to replace the F-Type R’s motive power, doesn’t need either gears or the racket of combustion to go just as fast, but the Jag’s way of doing things (which already has a bit of a classic tinge) will always be something to look back on and love.
Harder to move on from, however, will be the long-nosed and low F-Type coupé layout with its low-as-a-snake’s-armpit driving position, which allowed your bum to be just a few inches above the road and from which you sighted over the top of the steering wheel rim and straight down the air-scooped bennet. le dyntion, these nose-heavy, arrow-like stability.
The much-praised packaging flexibility of next-generation EVs, even sporty ones, will almost certainly lift the driving position above that of an F-Type by 75-100mm (in other words, a mile) to get a massive battery under the car.
The nose won’t need to be as long or capacious so the driver and passenger will move frontwards (the vaunted ‘forward control’ layout designers talk about) and the proportions that made the Jaguar E-Type will be gone.
This F-Type was not the perfect car, of course. With its seat in the right position, it required you to look for intersection traffic around hefty windscreen pillars whose base was as wide as a tree trunk.
Given its family car length, it wasn’t very package-efficient, and its 1780kg kerb weight was a lot for a two-seater, even if it is bound to be at least 500kg shy of the car that will replace it.
Not that there will be one in the short term: all the signs from the all-change Jaguar of 2025 are that sports cars will be off the agenda except, almost certainly, in the artful words of ad campaigns.
However, it wouldn’t be right to allow this particular ‘goodbye’ to turn into too much of a lament. A cursory hunt for nearly new V8-engined F-Types in the classifieds turns up around 40 possibles at prices from £80,000, and many of them have been recently discounted.
Cars like this will be available for many years, and the factors that discourage you from using an F-Type as a daily driver (visibility, size, width) will keep low-milers relatively common.
