Review: Jaguar F-Type Rally Car

And guess what? They have! Meet here the slightly daft Jaguar F-Type rally car. There are only two, and you can bet you won’t be seeing them on the stages of the WRC any time soon, but this is an exploration of both the history of Jaguar and pure engineering joie de vivre.

make the F-Type into a rally car Jaguar started with a convertible (in memory of the original car, NUB 120) fitted with Jaguar’s four-cylinder, 300PS (295bhp) engine and rear-wheel-drive. Why use the F-Type with the smallest engine? Because it’s lighter than the vees, for one thing, and you don’t need 500PS off road. The rubber was swapped for gravel spec rally tyres and the car’s big rims were jettisoned for a set of 16-inch alloys (the first time a Jag sportscar has had 16-inchers since the XJS). The canvas roof was ditched and replaced by a FIA-spec roll cage, and underneath the Jag grew a 5mm ‘bash plate’ to take care of the rougher stuff. Finally, to save more weight the door cards have both been replaced with carbon and the side glass has gone completely. 

The rally car keeps the standard eight-speed automatic ‘box, but does gain a hydraulic handbrake. Hand-built dampers from rally specialist XTC have been added, and the spring rates have been reduced to give the car more suspension travel and keep the wheels in contact with the ground over the bumps. The final modification to note is the complete disconnection of all the usual driver aids – bye bye ABS, DSC, torque vectoring…

The modifications are striking, the F-Type has gone from streetside prima donna to rally stage rugged, especially with the quite fantastically overkill quad-light pod attached to the nose. That cage bursting the top is quite jarring at first, but in action the package makes total sense. With big chunky tyres ripping up the dirt it looks at home on the mud and, dare we say it, much better when covered in a layer of grime. It also sounds the part, with the centre box having been deleted from the exhaust, to capture that rally ‘bark’.

Obviously we’re not to be allowed out on our own, instead Jaguar have provided a couple of people who know what they’re actually doing. In my case it’s Jade Paveley, the 2018 Junior Welsh Tarmac rally champion, and more importantly and unflappably calm passenger. Kitted-up, getting into the caged F-Type is not the easiest thing (especially at 6ft 2in), but inside you’re snug in a proper racing seat, strapped in by a six-point racing harness. Jag have taken all the precautions they can, but at the end of the day they’re letting a bunch of journalists loose on their property in a 300PS rally car, one of only two in existence. No pressure…

I have no reference points for rally cars, but I do have plenty of time in F-Types under my belt. Even so, this is an utterly alien experience straight away. The F-Type in its more beastly modes is a proper hardcore muscle machine, but in four-cylinder guise it’s more of a pretty sportscar, the kind of thing you take the utmost care of, trying not to kerb the alloys every time you park. The rally cars are aching to be thrown at things that would make any normal Jaguar flinch.

Each crunch and bump brings a wince at first – you shouldn’t be doing this to an F-Type, I should be emailing the PRs to say sorry for scraping their lovely press car… Ignore that sensation, press on and this becomes the happiest F-Type in the world. It’s not in its natural environment and it loves it.

The feel without any of the usual assists is magnificent, and the traction from those gravel tyres is almost unbelievable. The muddy concrete should provide no grip at all, and indeed almost straight away I’m suffering an almighty tankslapper. But the car is unfased, the grip is at hand, the F-Type just needs you to keep calm and make the right decision. The heavier-than-normal steering is immensely flickable once you’re going, but full of feel and remains speedy even with the giant rubber, and the four-cylinder provides more than enough power to bring the rear round. There are obvious drawbacks to taking a sportscar off road (the wheelbase is all wrong and it’s still a bit too low) but that makes this even more impressive.

It doesn’t take long to feel comfortable with this rally-car-that-shouldn’t-be. That’s partly due to Jade’s incredible patience, but the car itself is a real testament to the brains inside JLR. When project leader Simon Butterworth was handed a pair of F-Type road cars and told to turn them into rally cars he would have been quite within his rights to tell his superiors they were barmy. Instead the man who spent his childhood in Kielder Forest watching the RAC rally attacked the project with relish. The result is the embodiment of the fun side of a thoroughly modern car company, the proof that engineers should be allowed off the leash every now and then. It’s also a showcase of how good a car the original F-Type was. Jaguar’s top sportscar is starting to show its age in certain areas, but good engineering will always be good engineering and the F-Type’s inherent ability overcomes interior age when you allow it to really breathe.

Stat attack

Price: £57,405

Engine: 2.0-litre, turbocharged petrol

Transmission: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive

Power/torque: 300PS (296bhp) @ 5,500rpm/400Nm (295lb ft) @ 1,500-4,500rpm

0-62mph: 5.7 seconds (on tarmac…) 

Top speed: 155mph (in standard road car form) 

Economy: 35.8mpg (but do you really care in a rally car?)

Gross vehicle weight: 1,925kg (before the rally conversion)