new jaguar sports car

when you've built the most beautiful car evermade, what on earth do you do for an encore? it's taken jaguar fifty years to answer thatquestion, but at last the f-type is here. the jag launches into a tough market, andone of biggest rivals is the new porsche cayman. and it just happens to cost 20,000 poundsless one of my earliest memories was riding in my dad's e-type jag when i was just 3 yearsold. and that's what got me really hooked on cars.this f type is the v6s. it's the mid point of the range between the v6 and the v8. with375 brake horse power on tap, it hits 60 miles an hour in less than five seconds. well mydad only had a volvo estate. as a kid growing up in the '80s, it was porsche that was thereal embodiment of sports cars.

to me, nobody does it better. last year, tim said the porsche 911 was thebest sports car in the world. i bet now he's saying that the cayman is just as good todrive, and it costs half the price. and this cayman's just over half the price.it's also nearly twenty thousand pounds less than the cheapest f-type. i've been right now, tim's trying to tellyou the porsche is a really good family car. well i'd been more than happy to the schoolrun twice every morning in this. look at the f-type. it looks like it's doing 100 milesan hour standing still. in comparison both porches just look a bit dull. okay [xx] okay.

so this standard cayman is about a secondslower to sixty miles an hour than the f-type. but forget about that it's handling that mattersmost. where the jaguar's got its big heavy engine out in the front, in this car the engineis right behind me, banging the middle, and that gives it near perfect weight distributionand great balance for cornering. but the f-type is like an old-fashioned musclecar, and i love it for that. the steering is really direct, and the back end is almosttoo willing to slide out. i wouldn't bank on the back tires lasting very long. old-schoolor not, it's extremely fast. but dad's old e-type wouldn't have come close. back in the real world the cayman is morepractical than you might think. there's room

for luggage in the front and in the back.back, and the combined volume is more than a ford fiesta. compare that to the shallowslot you get in the f-type. jaguar was below average for our reliability and the latestwhich car survey, the largest of its kind in the uk. porsche was better and was also it's at topfor owner satisfaction. that's all very sensible, but on the road, the jag just feels more specialand it's 8-speed automatic gear box really lives up to its quick shift name. i've alwayspreferred a manual gearbox in a sports car, but most people will pay 2 grand more forthis pdk dual-clutch auto, and i can see why. it accelerates quicker and is more economical.so what do you reckon then claire you've waited

fifty years for this car. not quite 50 years.okay not quite 50 years, but a long time. was it worth the wait? definitely. it's thebest thing to come out of coventry since the e-type. i think it's the best car of the year. it is a fantastic car, i'll give you that,but. but you'd take the cayman? you already know that. i think it's better to drive i'mconfident it would be better to live with and it's so much cheaper. but it's so predictable.well the fact is that i can't even nearly afford either of these cars. so i'm gonnabe in the cheap seats for the way home. are you coming? no thanks, i'm off to take dad for a spin.