Jaguar F-Type To Debut In Paris

Where better to debut something that is rumoured to make people go “WOW” than in Paris. Normally this goes on a catwalk but for Jaguar’s all-new aluminium two-seater sports car, YPE, Paris means the Paris Motor Show on 27th September.

We’ve already seen prototypes being tested, so rumours abound as to what it will do, what are its limitations, and just how much we all will salivate over it, but now we get a chance to see the real thing in the flesh – or in the metal, anyway.

Adrian Hallmark, Global Brand Director, Jaguar Cars, said: “The unveiling of the F-TYPE in Paris will be a truly significant day in Jaguar’s history as it will mark the company’s return to the sports car market, a market it originally helped to create.

“As its sporting forebears did in their era, the F-TYPE will break new ground by delivering stunning sports car performance while vividly demonstrating Jaguar’s cutting-edge engineering technologies and world-class design excellence. The next step in Jaguar’s sporting bloodline is about to become reality.”

All a bit PR-y for my liking because Jaguars speak for themselves, and certainly not in that sort of language, but you do get some sort of idea of the pride that Jaguar themselves have in this model which physically launches in mid-2013 but already has people talking about it.

Initially the F-TYPE will be launched as a convertible equipped with Stop/Start technology and with a choice of three petrol engines: 340PS and 380PS versions of Jaguar’s all-new 3.0-litre supercharged V6, and a new derivative of its existing supercharged 5.0-litre V8, all driving the rear wheels through an eight-speed transmission.

And you can rest assured that the F-TYPE has been through all the rigorous testing that one would expect Jaguar to do before letting their babies out into the big bad world.

The F-TYPE was first seen at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June of this year, and since then it has been tested in some of the harshest environments in the world to verify all the work carried out by Jaguar’s engineers in the ‘virtual world’, a process in which the company is an industry leader.

Just to show how much work was done by Jaguar’s engineers, they boast that “more than half-a-million separate F-TYPE design analyses have been carried out comprising 10-million CPU hours of processing, creating more than 300TB of data. Had that same amount of initial design analysis been completed on physical cars, the number of prototype F-TYPEs built would have filled the majority of the UK’s motorway network bumper-to-bumper.” Pretty impressive, huh?

The result of all that ‘virtual’ design work is that now Jaguar’s engineers are currently concentrating on honing the performance of the real thing itself to make sure that the F-TYPE when it is delivered is the very best that it can be.

Ian Hoban, Jaguar’s Vehicle Line Director, said: “When you are working on a Jaguar sports car the expectations of the world are huge. We’re really pleased how the attributes have translated from the virtual simulation work we’ve done into the physical world.

“Now, we’re refining and adding those last few percentage points – that true element of honing which the Jaguar test team are delivering – which will turn a great sports car into an exceptional one.”

Now isn’t that just what you wanted to hear?