Cars are like dogs: you can tell the owner by the breed. Take the Jaguar XKR. It is classically British. Comfortable in Monaco or Marlow, but prefers the latter. A typically British underdog, even slightly schizophrenic in that it can roar one minute and be ever so timid and Middle England the next. It is... Tim Henman. Except Henman isn't quite as quick. The XKR can hit 150mph. That's more Andy Roddick speed than Henman, whose serve has been timed to just under 140mph.
Henman was one of the first to take delivery of the latest XKR (he's sponsored by Jaguar). His is silver, has a black roof and looks gorgeous - like its predecessors the E-Type and the XJ-S, it miraculously gets better looking over time.
Naturally, Tim and I meet in SW19. Henman is at Wimbledon to hand out awards for the Ariel children's tennis scholarships. All morning the questions have been about tennis, but then his manager Jan points him towards me and his XKR. "This one's all about cars," she tells him.
Tim's face lights up. "Oh good," he beams and marches over to get stuck into talking motors. Asking Henman what excites him about his sponsored Jaguar, I feel a bit like Mrs. Merton asking Debbie McGee what first attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels. I am expecting political correctness, niceness - all the things you'd expect from a well brought-up Oxfordshire public schoolboy.
"When the whole Jaguar thing came about I hadn't actually seen the new XKR. I thought the XK8 was a good car, but I hadn't seen the XKR, so I didn't have massively high hopes, if you get my drift," says Tim, trying to say the XK8 is a bit too Wentworth than Wimbledon for his taste. "Then when I saw the XKR and I drove it, I was so impressed by it. It's been brilliant."
Brilliant. Based on what? It turns out the ever-so-British Tim has spent the last few years allied to Mercedes and Porsche. It earned him a lot of criticism from MPs who thought the best British tennis player since the war should drive British. "I had a Mercedes C43 for a while, which had a great engine. And then I had a 500SL, and then at some stage I got my first Porsche, about 1999 or something. It was a 996," Tim says.
The XKR compares very well: "I think its lines are brilliant. Wasn't it designed by the same guy that designed Aston Martins? The engine and the performance are very good too. I was slightly concerned about the automatic gearbox. On a practical basis it's pretty nice sometimes when you can whack it in drive and sit in a traffic jam for half an hour, not having to worry about it. Plus I like that fact I am now in a British car. I've always been proud to be British."
The Jaguar connection goes back a few years. Henman was invited to the British Grand Prix as a guest of a team sponsor. He was hooked.
"I'd love to have a go on a clear race track. That would be brilliant fun," Henman grins. He has heard about two-seat Formula One cars and thinks that would be the way to go. "I'm sure it would absolutely scare the hell out of you."
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Next: Buying a Porsche one afternoon 
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