Ray Leathern reckons that despite the cool and calm GT look, Jaguar’s XKR coupé is as close as you’re going to get to good, old fashioned, hooligan, sports car behaviour.

I’ve angered the beast that is the supercharged XKR. The metallic drone I hear behind me is the XKR’s exhaust system on the overrun. It’s dumping great fistfuls of pressurised annoyance and fuel out the back, through its set of quad tail pipes. Still in first gear, I have been doing 20 km/h for what feels like an eternity now. The sense that the XKR has a caged fury bubbling up under the two slanted nostrils, abeam its long power bulge, is very hard to escape right now. I’m not happy. It’s not happy. I feel it every time I dab the throttle. The XKR deserves much better than this. 20 km/h and pouring with rain.

After having taking delivery of the XKR earlier in the morning, all these silly things that dominate us, like deadlines, schedules and meetings, have conspired to put me straight into the teeth of Cape Town’s N1 outbound traffic. Now, through a cruel twist of fate, it’s absolutely bucketing down with rain too. In fairness it’s been raining for about two weeks solidly. So I don’t know what I was expecting? I was hoping fate would cut me some slack I guess.

375 kW and 625 Nm of brutish, British fury are straining to break loose from this roving prison. The groan of its 5.0-litre V8 is the gruff stuff all highly temperamental machines take on when they are forced to operate well below their potential. That and also because I’m still in Sport mode, in first gear, trying to not let another Peugeot slip in front of me in the traffic. “Chomping at the bit there I see eh lad”, as the Brits might say. The Jag is probably what a croaky Rolling Stones sound check echoing through an empty stadium would sound like. We aren’t going anywhere, but I’m beginning to love it all the same.

Despite this hint of daydreaming, I’m starting to get a little panicky. This typical Western Cape squall is building in ferocity and I can feel it is moments away from landing gallons more precipitation onto our little traffic parade. The distance between the Jaguar XKR’s front and rear fenders rivals the length of the HMS Invincible and the Isuzu KB behind me looks like it’s trying to climb into my back window. It’s probably miles behind me, but not from where I’m sitting in a low slung, supercharged, cat. The clutch of the 6-speed automatic also feels like it would rather be somewhere else. In this useless, urban traffic, molasses, it’s proving to be downright thorny.

A feather-lite glide on the throttle timed with a careful ease off again awaits you at every single stop, unless you want to see just how large a hole 625 Nm can create in the back of the car in front of you. It’s for this reason that you don’t really drive through city traffic as much as you have to taxi the Jaguar XKR through it. The XKR is comfortable enough I guess, but it requires your concentration and the Jag is big, low and harder to see out of than you might think. Treat town driving like you’re a fighter jet easing your way along a flight deck before launch. At least being in the traffic gives me an opportunity to drink in the XKR’s interior.

It is the opposite of spartan on the inside, but it isn’t gaudy and remains supple, with well fitted leather and suede trim throughout. Gorgeous. Two low slung seats bolster you and your passenger in place and there is a semblance of rear seats for those who have but nowhere else to go. What I like is how your seating position is low enough within the shell of the car to make your shoulders (and not the small of your back) the focal point of the cars thrust.

The speedometer, fuel gauge and rev counter cluster don’t surge outwards towards the driver like a speedy dashboard should. The rest of the cabin is luxurious and well-appointed with sat-nav, Bluetooth connectivity and all the other goodies you’d expect for over a million rand.

From inside the XKR’s cabin you have every sense of the Jaguar’s imposing exterior that hulks all around you. That is the mythical whiff of old-school sportscar I mentioned. With its 20-inch wheels, styling folds and embellishments, the XKR has a seriously muscled disposition and you don’t need to be reminded of it only by shop front reflections. Its cleaved angles, jagged front and rear light clusters, the massively solid wheel arches and long bonnet, are just manna from heaven for a ‘once-a-boy-racer, always-a-boy-racer’. The Jaguar XKR must be one of the best looking cars ever.

As soon as the traffic clears, I floor it and feel the Jag’s massive rear tyres aquaplane on the soaked road. Most people are given to over-exaggeration when telling stories like this, but this time I can tell you nothing else but the honest to goodness truth. By flooring the XKR and angling the steering wheel an inch to the right to initiate an overtake, the rear end swung out on the highway, plain and simple. Within nanoseconds the car was back in line and travelling as it should, but I wasn’t the same after that I’m afraid. That moment reaffirmed for me what a twitchy, aggressive, hairy chested man’s car the XKR is.

Thankfully, a healthy serving of fog engulfed me and my already fed up machine as we climbed the N1 out of town and I decided for the rest of my time in the Jaguar XKR everything would stay in comfort, normal, GT, you-must-be-a-wuss mode.  A gut wrenchingly tragic few days of constant winter rain, beyond and within the city limits, ensued. I wish I could tell you more about the cars handling, response and power. Quite honestly I didn’t get a chance to test them for fear of those rear tyres coming free again. Never fear, the Jaguar XKR-S isn’t far away on the SA Car Fan test schedule and when it arrives we can see how much ‘purr’ this apex predator has. Our fingers are crossed for dry Spring weather.

What we like…

• Interior quality, comfort and standard equipment.
• Freight train acceleration from the supercharged 5.0-litre engine.
• Stunning looks and real presence.

What we would like…

• A discount. R1.1 million-plus is quite a lot of money for an ageing car.
• Someone to pay for the fuel bills if possible, or a bigger tank than 71L.