[Year's_End]

Edmund's Insideline previews the new Jag XF. Looks like it should be huge news when it arrives. So far it seems positive. Biggest in its class. I like the styling except for the headlights.

"We're sitting in the back of the new 2009 Jaguar XF in the middle of nowhere and the three of us are talking about Jaguar's freshly rediscovered sense of confidence.

"Everything changed after the XK," says Richard Parry-Jones, the chief technical officer at Ford who is retiring this year. "The XK's success, internally and externally, gave everyone the right to believe again. I think what you see inside here are designers enjoying themselves again. There's a lovely sense of fun, even of irony in here."

As Parry-Jones says this, he lovingly fingers the little blood-red starter button, which by now has started to pulse gently. A slightly firmer push, and the 2008 Jaguar XF's 4.2-liter V8 engages and, as it does so, the fat circular knob that selects gears raises out of the console.

Parry-Jones pauses. "Well, maybe not quite irony yet."

Three Guys in North Wales
It doesn't matter whether you think the XF starting procedure is gently ironic or deeply symbolic, but the fact is that people have had fun in here. Consider the way the air vents spin around from within the blank fascia of the dashboard once the engine is switched on, or the Union Jack that overlays the touchscreen as the electronic systems come on line, or even the touch-sensitive lights with their pale-blue cocktail bar cast. Even the fact that there's more wood in here than ever before in a Jag (yes, despite the omnipresence of brushed aluminum trim).

But back to three men in a car. We're here not only with Parry-Jones — the man who revolutionized vehicle dynamics development at Ford (Queen Elizabeth made him a Commander of the British Empire, no less) — but also Mike Cross, our generation's answer to legendary Jaguar development driver Norman Dewis and the reason why Jaguars and Range Rovers ride and handle better than anything else.

These two gentlemen are driving gods, and so when they decided they were happy enough with the last development prototypes of the 2008 Jaguar XF to give us a little taste, we were able to ride along with them to Northern Wales, where the roads are demanding enough to trick all but the most well-sorted of cars.

A Great Place To Be
Don't ask us how we know, but we think this a great car that is delivered with great confidence. We're blown away by it. And we weren't at first.

It is, of course, an Ian Callum car, the latest shape from the designer who has become the official supplier of dreams for the bedroom walls of young boys, including such visions as the Aston Martin DB7, DB9, Vanquish and Vantage. The Jaguar XF is officially Callum's second Jaguar after the Jag XK, and it doesn't grab you like the Astons. Not immediately, anyhow.

But things change. We didn't feel our jaw drop when we first saw the XK, but now we can't pass one without turning our head and find ourselves stopped dead in our tracks, completely goggling lecherously at its sensual body. So we think you need to give the XF some time. It is just as good as the XK.

The key to seeing the spirit of Jaguar in the XF (and not a Lexus GS instead) is to look at the front and the rear of the car — in particular, the extremities of the nose and tail. Though it's not always apparent in pictures, there's a quite profoundly classical crest over the two outside headlights and then a whole bunch of the XK's DNA in the rear shoulders. Frame your view of the F's aggressively modern lines through the doors, and there's the new Jag shape we've been waiting God-only-knows how many years to see.

It's one of those things that just clicks — a kind of moment like, "My God, Miss Jones, you're beautiful." Mind you, we think those Golf GTI wheels are horrible.

Making Moves Like a Jaguar
Parry-Jones and Cross are here to sign off all the software that runs that lovely ZF-built six-speed automatic transmission, and once they're done, the steering might feel a little different and the springs and dampers could go a little this way, a little that. But this is diamond polishing. To be honest, the XF feels like it's 100 percent from the backseat.

The Jaguar XK is relevant here, because it has been the ride and handling benchmark for the XF. That's right, not the 5 Series or the E-Class or the Audi A6 or even the Lexus GS. Since the XF is meant to be a sport sedan through and through, what better car with which to compare it than a great GT? Where Ian Callum determined the XF's visual identity, Parry-Jones and Cross have established its dynamic one. Hell, we could be wrong, but we reckon it wipes the floor with the three Germans and the J-car.

We like a car that looks after us, and not just when we want to perfectly nail one of the motorway roundabouts down in Milton Keynes, near all the Formula 1 factories. We don't want our $70,000 sport sedan to feel like a $20,000 hatchback. Is that unreasonable? Not in Germany, it seems, where a devotion to "sporty feel" and some misplaced faith in the ride quality of run-flat tires has steered some German sport sedans down a path of ride and handling that's so singularly harsh that they've made us carsick.

Meanwhile, the Jaguar XF pulls away as quietly from rest as a Rolls-Royce Phantom. As first impressions go, this is good. Sorting out ride and handling is as much about the full sensory experience as the seat-of-the-pants experience. Parry-Jones and Cross tell me at length about the process of dialing out the noises that degrade the driving experience and dialing in those that enhance it. So while the XF sedan has less tire noise than the XK, there's actually more engine noise, at least in this car with its supercharged 4.2-liter V8.

Class With Character
It's no secret that this 4.2-liter V8, first introduced as the AJ-V8 in 1997, is no longer considered state-of-the-art. Now it sees service not only across the range of Jaguars but also Land Rovers. There are some major developments coming, but no one is saying exactly when. So it's easy to think of it as a hand-me-down, just as the chassis stuff the XK has inherited from the now-departed S-Type is also older technology.

Yet it's fair to say that by the end of its life, the S-Type had one of the best chassis in its class, and this engine deserves the same respect. We like it, although it's an iconoclast in a group that is powered by high-revving German clones. It unquestionably has got character, the one thing that the V8s from the A6, 5 Series, E-Class, and, God, the Lexus, so totally lack.

In fact, the XF oozes character, from the minute you first really see it in all its modern magnificence. This is a big car, the biggest in its class, yet it manages to look impressive, opulent, without ever looking overfed and privileged. Slip inside, switch on and witness the whole shift-lever ritual, and you're aware this isn't just a car with character, but one with a character you'll like.

Enjoy Yourself
Getting over your bashfulness, you grab that big fat shift knob, turn it to drive and off you go, and the V8 burbles like the Merlin V12 they used to stuff into Spitfire fighter planes on the same factory site where the XF is built. And then you bury the throttle.

And that's the bit you'll have to wait for. We're not allowed to talk about anything to do with driving this prototype, but let's just put it this way — it wasn't just the designers who had fun here.

But don't fret. The 2009 Jaguar XF is worth waiting for. It's going to be big. "

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