Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: £69,505 to £78,400
Performance to match the looks, exquisite ride and refinement.
Boot's too small, cabin's too ordinary.
A brilliant combination of performance, comfort and flair; now with an engine that delivers on the XK's looks.
The idea's the same as the previous-generation XK and XKR, but this time around the execution is even better. The XK, as before, is the big, comfortable coupe and convertible; the XKR is the supercharged version. Compared to the previous generation, the fat's been trimmed and the handling sharpened.
Jaguar talks about the new XKR being the XK plus 30%, which feels pretty accurate when it comes to performance, but fortunately it's not 30% more expensive - it's 12.5%, so at launch the coupe costs £67,495 and the convertible £73,495, against £59,995 and £65,995 for the non-R versions. Made at Castle Bromwich, it arrives in British showrooms in November.
It's lighter and roomier than the old XKR, which was launched in 1998, two years after the XK8. It's also a neater shape, having lost the huge rear overhang that skewed the old model's proportions.
There's just the one engine: the same 4.2-litre V8 used in the XK in 300bhp form, but here fitted with a supercharger and tuned to 416bhp. There's just the one transmission, too: a brilliant six-speed auto that comes with the option of manual sequential shifting.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Jaguar XKR
wrote on 24 03 2007