Jaguar XKR-S

There was a flash of black, a deep snarl and it was gone. Once again the desolate landscape of Exmoor was empty, save for a few sheep returning nervously to their grazing.

While the so-called “Beast of Bodmin”, 50 miles to the west, was long ago proven to be a hoax, there are still suspicions within Exmoor’s farming community that a large carnivore prowls the moors. There are stories of savaged livestock, frequently accompanied by claims of glimpses of a big, black, cat-like animal. Sceptics insist that it’s all in the imagination.



But there is no mistaking the physical reality of what has just vanished into the moor. It is black, menacing and weighs more than 1.5 tonnes. Thankfully, it has wheels, not teeth. It is a Jaguar. To be precise, the Jaguar XKR-S. It comes only in black and there will only ever be 200 in the world. As I notch it into a higher gear, and the big cat flings itself around yet another gorse-lined bend with exhilarating agility, that seems an awful pity.

These are extraordinary times for Jaguar Cars, created as the Swallow Sidecar Company by founder Sir William Lyons back in 1922. For much of the past 30 years, Jaguar has been really rather good at biting chunks out of its own backside. Its self-inflicted wounds included a long run of poorly designed and sometimes badly built cars, leaving Ford – which bought Jaguar in 1989 for $1.4bn – with deep scratches in its balance sheet.

Change for the good arrived with new design director Ian Callum, who in 2000 began tweaking the unfortunate S-Type and conservative XJ saloon into more appealing shapes. The first model for which he was entirely responsible, the XK sports coupe out of which the XKR-S has grown, arrived in 2005. This year there is also the XF compact executive saloon, and, for once, Jaguar cannot build enough of them.

Next year comes the all-new XJ large saloon; those who have seen the prototype describe it as stunning. There is no reason, new chief executive David Smith suggests, why Jaguar should not venture into the £100,000-plus ($185,000) territory stalked by other prestige brands such as Aston Martin and Bentley. Particularly now that Jaguar’s financial worries appear to have been ended by its $2bn purchase from cash-strapped Ford by Tata, one of India’s biggest industrial groups.



The XKR-S is emblematic of the atmosphere of optimism now spreading through Jaguar. In strictly nuts-and-bolts terms the XKR-S is just a limited-edition development of the mainstream £70,000 XKR model. There are some well thought-out aerodynamic changes – front splitter, rear diffuser, bootlid spoiler and side skirts – which work well to keep the car composed at the 174mph of which it is now capable (the “basic” XKR is electronically limited to 155mph). The brakes are larger; indeed they are racing units from Alcon. The steering has been made sharper and the suspension lowered and stiffened. There are bigger, but lighter, forged aluminium wheels with, at the rear, even wider, 295mm Pirelli P Zero tyres.

There is the small matter of a cheque for £10,000 more than a “standard” XKR. The XKR-S costs just a fiver short of £80,000. That’s still £3,000 cheaper than a V8 Vantage Aston Martin, and it comes with a Vantage-matching 420hp V8 engine.

For the money, you get more than the sum of the XKR-S’s parts. And, to understand why, you have to think not Jaguar, but skunk.



The XKR-S is a classic “skunk works” project, concocted on the quiet between two of Jaguar’s most formidable and long-serving talents: dynamics guru Mike Cross and chief programme engineer Russ Varney. Under all normal circumstances, cars are a compromise: even the standard XKR has to accommodate a wide variety of buyer demands in areas such as ride comfort. Messrs Cross and Varney decided, instead, to create the car they wanted to drive themselves.

Except for the exhaust snarl – which is bad enough to frighten the fleece off an Exmoor sheep – the XKR-S remains remarkably civilised, even over the bumps and dips of narrow and challenging roads. For sure, more road noise comes through the Jag’s all-aluminium frame than on the standard car; and a pothole will cause a sharper jolt through the steering. But these are small prices to pay for a chassis which otherwise has remarkable composure. Little development money has been spent on the interior, but cockpit room, driving position and ergonomics have long been Jaguar strengths.

It is reasonable to ask, however: why bother testing something of which only 200 are being made, with the likelihood that most will have been sold by the time this magazine appears? The answer is simple: the XKR-S tells us what kind of cars we can expect from Jaguar in the future. One of Callum’s dearest wishes, for example, is to bring into the world a truly lightweight, super-agile aluminium two-seater, in the spirit of the cars which took Jaguar to so many past racing victories.

Back on Exmoor, it takes a real effort of will to nose the Jaguar down from the clusters of small villages which, on this day of scattered rain and sullen clouds, are mostly deserted. I look at a petrol gauge neglected in our progress across the moors. It suggests I will soon be trying to drive on fresh air. Swooping towards the town of Tiverton, we spot a small roadside garage and pull in. We have stopped, a sign above the doors proclaims, at “The Black Cat Garage”. And, no, I didn’t make that up.