TG TV: your guide to the mad, bad Jaguar F-Type SVR

The SVR is the fastest, most powerful Jaguar F-Type you can buy. Therefore, it’s the fastest and most powerful Jaguar you can buy full stop.

While F-Types come with sensible (ish) four- and six-cylinder engines further down the range, taking on Porsche 718s and 911 Carreras with usability and awareness of running costs worked into their formula, the SVR is the mad, loud and downright rude 911 Turbo rival.

It’s a supercharged 5.0 V8. It’s used in lesser powered F-Types, the Jaguar XJR saloon and some of the sillier Range Rovers, but it’s at its most potent in the 567bhp F-Type SVR.

As well as having more power, it exhaust system differs over a V8 F-Type R, which is hardly quiet in the first place. If we’re being techy, it’s made of titanium and Inconel and weighs 16kg less than the system on the R. If we’re being childish, though, it’s joyously loud.

You might wonder if it’s too loud, or if it’s even legal to make so much noise in a car. Then you pull yourself together, stop being such a grown up, and pull the left paddle for a gratuitous downchange just to provoke another round of pops and crackles.

This is where the SVR’s biggest headline comes from: it goes 200mph. Well, it does if you go for the Coupe - like Rory does in ep 1 of series 25. Choose the Convertible – which you feasibly might, given how much more of the silly noise you’ll get to enjoy – and you have to make do with a mere 195mph.

You’ll be delighted to know their 0-62mph times are equal, though, at 3.7secs. Think that’s really quick for some heavy V8 sports cars? The SVR is all-wheel drive. Try putting 567bhp through only the rear wheels and we imagine the tyres would self-combust at the mere thought of it.

It’s broadly an old-school bruiser. The AWD is a nod to modern life, while you can only have an automatic gearbox. But given Jag’s eight-speed paddleshifter is ace, and its six-speed manual average, that’s exactly what you want.

There are a few adjustable modes once inside, but nothing that’s pioneering, and in truth the joy of this car is the mating of loud, boisterous V8 power to a front-engined GT car. It’s an old recipe with a few up-to-date ingredients.

We said it’s a 911 Turbo rival, so that means it’s 911 Turbo money; F-Types start at 50 grand, yet the SVR’s £112,680. Add another £5,500 or so if you want the Convertible. Add another £10,000 or so if you want some nice options. Suddenly you’re in McLaren and Audi R8 territory…

Choosing the F-Type over a bunch of junior supercars would be difficult. But it’s bigger hearted, and exudes a greater sense of mischief than all of them, with genuine talent to back it all up.

The recipe of this car – and the noise it makes – suggests it’ll be absolutely off the chain. Yet its handling is polished. It’s the smartest F-Type to drive, happy to indulge some childishness with a very rear-biased AWD system, but equally happy to knuckle down and corner in a committed manner.

Early V8 F-Types didn’t like going in a straight line one bit; the SVR is a revelation in comparison. That the daftest looking and most riotous sounding F-Type of the lot is also the most dynamically mature is a brilliant surprise.