Jaguar ‘reviewing’ F-Type range

JAGUAR Land Rover Australia managing director Matthew Wiesner has flagged plans to reignite sales and awareness of its F-Type sportscar range – particularly at the lower end of the line-up – following a mammoth launch period that shifted focus to the new XE and XF sedans and the F-Pace mid-size SUV.

Although tagging the previous 12 months as “very much a year of Jaguar”, Mr Wiesner said the premium British brand runs a risk of falling into a lull due to fewer major product launches going forward, unless measures are taken to sustain interest in particularly halo offerings.

“I think we’ve had so much on, we’ve gone from XE to XF, new F-Pace, we’ve got preparations going on for new (Land Rover) Discovery coming in and sometimes with the resources we have in place the focus is just chopping and changing a bit too much,” Mr Wiesner told GoAuto at the launch of the Range Rover Evoque Convertible in Queensland last week.

“I think we need to get more out of cars like F-Type, and not just from a (sales) number point of view, but also to tell that story.

“We’ve got some ... opportunities coming which I think we can use better (to) actually start talking about our entry offerings which are pretty affordable around that $100K mark.

“If you look at that market, around the $90K to $115K space, you’ve got (Porsche) Boxster/Cayman, you’ve got the Audi TT S and RS, there’s actually quite a lot of activity in there that and we need to make sure that we’re seen to be competitive in and around there.” Asked whether such opportunities might include lowering the pricetag of the F-Type coupe and convertible range, which currently starts from $119,545 plus on-road costs, Mr Wiesner replied: “We’re looking at a couple of things there.

“We’re reviewing what we can offer around that space,” he added.

Speculation is rife that the F-Type will adopt a turbocharged four-cylinder from JLR’s new Ingenium engine family as part of a facelifted sportscar range expected next year, which would follow Porsche’s reduced cylinder count for the 718 Boxster and Cayman that start from $113,300 and $110,300 respectively.

Mr Wiesner’s other target, the Audi TT S, starts from an even lower $100,858.

“We’ve been sitting down and making sure next year we’re very clear of certain roles of certain products, and obviously F-Type from a Jaguar perspective is one that has a halo across everything,” he said.

“It dials up the whole performance story beautifully and we just want to make sure we constantly use it to tell that story.” More imminently the F-Type will get a boost at the other end of the pricing scale with the flagship SVR models arriving shortly priced between $289,590 (coupe) and $308,470 (convertible) – premiums of $47,310 and $47,490 respectively over the existing F-Type R AWD range-toppers.

“With SVR F-Type just arriving now, that’s a gorgeous drive, it behaves very, very differently to an AWD R but there’s a lot more we can get out of those products to constantly tell that Jaguar story,” Mr Wiesner said of the 423kW model that claims a 3.7s 0-100km/h sprint time.

The current F-Type coupe and convertible line-up includes the 250kW/450Nm 3.0-litre supercharged V6 standard model, the 280kW/460Nm S version of the same engine, and the 404kW/680Nm 5.0-litre supercharged V8 R, with the latter two in rear- or all-wheel drive and the 423kW/700Nm SVR still to come.

Although the Jaguar sportscar’s 159-unit sales so far this year (to the end of October) is up 7.4 per cent, the Boxster/Cayman near-twins have managed 433 sales.