Twin test: Jaguar F-Type SVR vs Porsche 911 Turbo S

Two sports cars, but we’ve got supercharged vs twin-turbocharged. V8 vs flat-six. Two-seater vs two-plus-two. No, we’re still not short of fresh air between the Jaguar F-type and Porsche 911.

Finally, though, we’ve got two that properly line up. Two undisputed rivals. F-Type SVR vs 911 Turbo S. Two 570bhp coupes with all-wheel drive, paddleshift gearboxes and each comfortably capable of reaching the Holy Grail among fast car stats. The first series-production Jag ever to hit 200mph meets the first series-production 911 to crack the double ton.

Pictures: Simon Thompson

Is there any point to the Turbo S? No-one staggers from a regular 911 Turbo, considers the £18,848 change in their pocket and frowns “hmm, that could do with another 40bhp.”

No, the breathtaking power is incidental. Think of the S more as a time-saving exercise, not for your journey but when you first buy the car. Ceramic brakes, the PDCC active anti-roll bars, 18-way adjustable seats and centre-lock rims are all standard. Just think of the whole minutes that’ll save checking boxes at the gleeful salesman’s desk. Speed is clearly your thing, after all.

But let’s get back to the power. Partly, because the £145,773 Turbo S’s 572bhp output is spitting difference from the £110,000 F-type SVR’s 568bhp, but mostly because I want to dispel a myth. The Turbo S is not an instant-hitting, twist’n’go teleporter.

Not like a, say, Tesla. I think we’ve all become so awed by its clinically rapid launch control (ignore the official 2.9-second 0-62mph claim; this is a 2.5sec car all day long), that we just imagine the Turbo S boots you up the road with so much as a wry glance at its old-school cool floor-hinged throttle.

Sure, it does when you prime the launch control once in a month of Sundays. But the in-gear kick in the backside you deploy every day, several times a minute? Different story.

There’s drama to power’s arrival – you don’t just hear the 911’s whooshing turbos clearing their throat, but feel the pressure building like you’re a stuntman perched atop those CO2 cannons they use to execute car chase jumps.

Unlike the old 997, you can still detect a dollop of flat-six gnashing beneath the duvet of forced induction muffle, but it’s the opening act. Porsche says maximum torque (553lb ft on overboost) is held from 2,250rpm to 4,000rpm, but it’s higher up the rev range, where outright torque gives way to the max power, where the S doesn’t just save time. It bends time.

You’d expect the supercharged, 105kg heavier Jag to be totally unable to keep up with all of that. So did I. And we’d both be wrong.

It’s not that the SVR is suddenly leagues quicker than a regular F-type R – it isn’t. The differences are subtle, not least because in gaining the Project 7’s V8 calibration, power has risen modestly from 542bhp to 568bhp, and torque by just 14lb ft to 516lb ft.

It’s the driven front wheels – not the slight power tickle – that makes this a seriously fast Jag. Hurrah: an F-Type that can employ most of its available horses and doesn’t constitute attempted murder when it rains. What a novelty.

Where the Porsche’s flat-six is dominated by its turbos, Jaguar has cloaked its supercharging. Forget Dodges and Holdens that whine is as if fueled by helium. The Jaguar crackles like a campfire doused in super unleaded.

You can’t hear the supercharger, or feel its power drain. There’s no inertia to this motor, so throttle response is pin-sharp – approaching difficult to manage accurately when you’re up it.

Familiarity is needed to call up the desired amount of fury from that cackling volcano in the nose, but the SVR’s superior damping (softer up front and tighter at the back) is more controlled than the standard car’s and more capable of shrugging off mid-corner bumps without losing composure.

Lo and behold, with the body more tied down, reigning in the V8 is easier to concentrate on. And it instantly feels very, very quick. Absolute traction, and a machine that, shockingly, can hang onto the 911 in a straight line.

Officially, it’ll do 0-62mph in 3.5 seconds, but delete the 911’s arse-engined traction advantage and it’s a closer call.

The Porsche will get away on a real road though, because it’s confidence-boosting from the moment you drop past its slim, pillarless door. You sit lower, looking over a more panoramic scuttle.

The Turbo S, like the F-type, has Kardashian-buxom hips, but because you’ve a superior view of a nose that appears miles narrower, you’re immediately placing it with smoother, more accurate inputs than the wideboy Jag. 

The Turbo’s a massive car now too, but you can still see out of it, and still judge your position accurately thanks to those headlight turrets at either end of the bonnet.

Porsche’s gone for heavier, more progressive steering, while the Jag has hyperactive response from the thick, dished wheel that’s ill-at-ease with the sheer weight trying to switch direction.

The 911’s centre of gravity tucks under your knees. The Jag hangs it on your shoulders. And though the 911’s steering is dulled and diluted compared to the alchemy of an RS’s feedback, in this fight the Turbo S is more communicative and reassuring.

To match the Turbo S’s irreproachable ceramic brakes, you’ll add £8,570 to the SVR’s price, upgrading not just the discs and calipers but the forged spiders necessary to stretch across them.

Worth it? Yes – the F-type’s weight problems necessitate industrial brakes – but though you’ll struggle to worry them on the road, the SVR cooks its brake rotors on circuit long before the 911 worries its own.

To be frank, you have to drive either of these at irrational speed to really split them, but when you do, a fault line develops between Brit and German. The 911, which seems so serious, so absolute in its pursuit for speed, is the car that breaks grip first, and leaves you tiny corrections to make.

The Jag – irresistibly lairy in its lesser rear-drive versions – stays much more locked down now it’s donned the SVR badge. And you’d want to cover a greater distance in the Jaguar. The bucket seats, stitched for the SVR in diamond quilting, are sublimely comfortable, and while the cabin is shamed by the 911’s packaging, it doesn’t generate half the tyre roar the rowdy Porsche transmits at a cruise.

A few days after we shot these photos I schlepped the SVR to Le Mans and back. It was good as gold on the autoroutes – a stunning trick for such an extrovert, brash muscle car. Loved the teal ambient lighting, too.

Whiling away hours in the SVR, you’ll appreciate its suede surfaces, supple leathers and metal paddles that finally lift an F-Type’s cabin toward feeling expensive, if not really £110k’s worth.

Porsche’s changes to the 911’s cabin for £160k Turbo S duty are subtler still; it’s dowdy on first impression, once you’ve swallowed how neat your environment is. It’s perfectly businesslike. The Jag, with its oversized dials, toylike toggle switches and peekaboo vents is less professional, but has passengers cooing.

I liked the SVR a lot more than I thought I would, especially having been unimpressed by F-Types until now. Finally, a package in which that rambunctious engine can be let loose without saying three Hail Marys at every braking point.

And for covering countries rather than counties, it’s the superior feet-up GT, no doubt. Thing is, it still leaves me a bit in doubt about what Jaguar’s special operations division is all about, because all of its extrovert qualities – save the retuned ride – reside in a regular F-type R AWD, for £18,320 less. One of those with the ceramics, please. No-one needs diamond-quilting that much.

Regardless, it’d remain vanquished by the Turbo S. It’s scramjet fast, has world-class packaging, but is still crisp to drive, still brimming with rewards to chase on twisting, undulating, challenging roads. Proper sports car roads. The modern 911 Turbo S may be a drag-race-stats king, but underneath, this rocketsled’s still a sublime sports car.