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Less than one year in, and it's time to get excited over the Jaguar F-Type all over again. What we have here is the new Coupe body. If that's not enough, we've also got the R badge. With that, the supercharged 5.0-litre engine is cranked up to 542bhp, as opposed to the 488bhp of the far-from-unexciting V8S Convertible.
But first, let's just look at it. We all know the Convertible is a shapely article to begin with. But the Coupe has even more to offer, because the designers' canvas extends above the waistline. And they made the most this extra scope for their artistry.
The roof arches over to a hatchback with a sharply tapering window. The side glass isn't just a bare triangle but has an upward kink that emphasises the sweep of the wheel-arches. Best of all, the whole cabin narrows to give a deep and meaningful rear haunch.
The tail slopes higher than the Convertible's horizontal boot lid, and there's no need to make space for the folded soft top. This means this is the first F-Type that doesn't demand you send your spare underpants ahead by courier. The boot isn't big but it's perfectly OK, with a useful extra bin beneath the flat floor too.
Never mind your bags, what about you? Well the cabin is nice and snug, but there's enough headroom, and the pillar-less design means you can see back over your shoulder at junctions.
The silhouette is largely clean of obvious aero trickery, but at 70mph a spoiler pops up from the trailing edge of the rear screen. There's no positive downforce, but it kills any lift.
The hard roof makes the car nearly twice as rigid, though the cloth-roof version is hardly soggy. The windscreen pillar and side rail is a very clever single-piece hydroformed extrusion. Even so, it's not obvious why this all-aluminium two-seater is 200kg heavier than a steel-and-aluminium 2+2 911.
Don't be fooled by the stickers saying this is a prototype. The engineers say it drives like the final thing. All that seemed to be awaiting a last fettle was the boot carpet.
As it sits in the pit-lane of a dry racetrack, with my name on it, I'm prepared to overlook the boot carpet.
Written By:- Paul Horrell
More of this article on the Top gear website
