Jaguar XKR convertible

I’m afraid, however, that the worst Jag apologist among Britain’s shrinking band of motoring hacks is me. I’m dreadful. I try my hardest to remain calm and rational. But reviewing a Jaguar is like reviewing the performance of a Wimbledon underdog. They are always brave and plucky and full of spirit and you’ll sort of forgive them anything, even when they’ve served 200 double faults on the trot, vomited on a ball boy and topped off the afternoon by sending round a horrid XJ40 that is held together with duct tape and powered by a stupid and weedy 3.2-litre engine. A car I once described as “magnificent” — just before I bought another Mercedes.

Well, with the new XKR, I decided it was high time to remove the underdog sympathy gene and explain why it was too little too late. I was going to point at the huge amount of extra brushed aluminium body piercings that have sullied the original — and extremely beautiful — shape and explain in no uncertain terms that there’s no point fitting back seats when there is no human being, not even the pygmy tribes of South America, who could ever actually fit in one.

Then, I was going to send in the nuke and explain that no one in their right mind would pay £78,400 for a car that had its light switch on the end of the indicator stalk. This may be acceptable in a £7,800 eco-box from the jungles of Burma, because one switch that does two things saves money. On a car like the XKR, it should be on the dash, as it is in my Mercedes.

And while we’re on the subject of the interior. No. Really, no. You cannot have a touchscreen satellite navigation system, because, as anyone who’s tried out the new BlackBerry will testify, they do not work.

I was primed. I’d dipped my keyboard in acid. I’d swallowed a handful of honesty pills and I was going to fire a lexicon of invective in the direction of Coventry, but then my XKR test car was delivered by two rather forlorn figures from Jag who sat at my kitchen table admiring my central heating and drinking coffee like it was exotic. Both said with expressions that I thought had gone west with Sir Clement Freud that they felt so unhappy, because now, at last, they had a range of great cars either on sale or nearing the end of the pipeline and that unless the damn banking crisis ended soon, all their efforts would have been in vain. I felt sorry for them, I’m afraid.

So, the new XKR? What a beaut. Jesus. This thing could rip a 911 clean in half while actually eating a BMW 6-series. And it’d still have enough energy left to pull an SL’s spine out. It’s the battle of Britain all over again, and the result’s the same. I mean, think about it — this XK is even made in the same factory that produced Spitfires.

The heart of the beast is a new 5-litre supercharged engine that develops 503bhp and enough torque to knock Dresden over again. There’s so much it’ll get from 50 to 70mph in a mind-blowing 1.9sec. Give this car an inch ... and it’d get past an Aussie road train.

There’s more. You get more bucking broncos for your bucks than in any other comparable car and yet, despite the tsunami of grunt, it produces just 292 carbon dioxides, which will put it in the new top tax band that starts next month but is nothing compared with, say, a Lamborghini Murciélago’s 495. It is, therefore, a brilliant engine. And it sounds good too. Like it’s made of meat.

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