Your consultant of the future
There were many striking similarities between the F-Type and me when we were created together. Desperate to make a call for ourselves in a new field, in the case of Jaguar, build a sports coupe that was not a rough and watery model. cake like XK: we lean towards chaos and are not silent about it.
It didn’t matter if there was the V6 or the V8 under the hood, the O. G. The F-Type’s exhaust pipes were constantly furious. It didn’t matter how low the tachometer needle was; Every time I stepped on the accelerator, it emitted a series of creaks and loud noises that, and I’m not kidding, made a small child cry on a nearby sidewalk. Still mired in post-college youth, so did I, impetuous and self-destructive, not caring one iota about anything around me as I ran through an endless cascade of late-night bars and murky morning commutes in the eye. Or we partied too much and had too much fun.
But the inexorable march of time tends to polish those peaks and valleys, and that’s what happened to me and the F-Type. Over the years, the Jaguar has grown and the 2023 model year’s exhaust looks like a slightly proportionate relic of the past. It’s still on the noisy side, of course, but the overtaking is gone, and with them part of the F-Type’s character.
The impetuosity of young people nevertheless gives way to refinement and maturity.
When that theater veneer, where I can burn a quarter tank of fuel in an hour of driving in the suburbs just because I never left the gear of the moment, nevertheless dissipated, what was left looked like a friend who was given a better job. He moved to a nicer position and stopped responding at 10 p. m. Texting on a Friday because they were already asleep. As I transitioned from this punk-rock release of mom and dad to a decades-long tech pillar full of expectations and norms, I learned that I, too, had grown and advanced. I turned my whole life upside down, packed everything into a newly purchased van, and stepped into the unknown, adding a physical and emotional distance between everything I knew and what was to come.
And it made me sad, in a way. That wide-eyed optimism about anything new and universally exciting has given way to the routines, the meetings, the main points of adult life that you feared in your youth. It made me need to hold on to those memories forever, shooting Sheridan down in that F-Type, hurling a harsh rebuke at the milquetoast population of Winnetka in their Equinox and CR-V, the tailpipes and me shouting, “We’ll never be like you. “But we are. Erosion wore away the sharp edges of our square pegs until we can get into the circular holes.
Despite some pinches and creases, the interior of the F-Type is largely the same as in its early days.
I tried to oppose the trend, try to get back there and feel like before, but it doesn’t have the same effect. The two-day hangover is my new normal. The same goes for the acquisition of mulch and the verification of contractors. Every time a new F-Type lands in my driveway to examine it, I locate the most productive routes imaginable to roll down the windows and listen to the noises I’ve sought to hear for years. But I can’t. They’re just gone. Sure, when you give the beans to that supercharged 575-horsepower, 515-pound-foot, 5. 0-liter V8, it still screams with the most productive of them, but it requires a lot more effort than before, and even then, it’s just not a landing with the same gravity it did in 2013.
I used to think it was a bad thing. But, as the time I’m desperately seeking to recover gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, it’s less difficult to keep my eyes pointing forward and appreciate more and more the present, more and more discharged. through my rose-tinted bad memory. The only thing that prevented me from appreciating what was in front of me my nostalgic attempt at necromancy.
Now, instead of seeing the 2023 F-Type as a rushed coupe that was forced to grow, I now see it as a sports car that has matured. His tattoos are still there, they just sneak in, hidden under the sleeves of a tailored suit.
Growing up can be fun, but a different emotion than you’re used to.
Jaguar’s adaptive suspension helps maintain a pleasurable, flat ride when the road becomes winding, the brakes are eye-catching and it twists like crazy when exiting corners while its Pirelli P-Zero summer tyres (265/30ZR20 front, 305/30ZR20 rear) and traction control formula desperately seek to maintain grip on a crisp October afternoon. It’s as exciting and alive as it was and has ever been. Except it looks a little more professional now, it’s a little quieter and the infotainment formula doesn’t look like what I want, even though the maps in the built-in navigation formula are already a decade back from their peak.
I still go to concerts, but now I wear earplugs (and since tinnitus sucks, you deserve it too). I can still hang out with friends, but I focus more on having interesting conversations and laughing, not crying, in smart moments. I love the space I helped build, the circle of family I helped grow, and there’s nothing more comforting than sitting on the couch and feeling satisfied with my accomplishments. Similarly, Jaguar deserves to be able to rest on its laurels and take advantage of the contribution. It has reached the latest era of internal combustion sports cars.