The Jaguar XFR-S Was Jaguar's Forgotten Super Sedan

When you think of crazy high-performance sedans, you primarily think of vehicles like the BMW M5, the Audi RS6 and the Mercedes-Benz AMG E63. Few other vehicles get mentioned in this discussion, largely because these three are so clearly the gold standard that nothing else is even worthy of mention. Maybe someone brings up the Cadillac CTS-V. Maybe.

But Jaguar once attempted to enter this segment with a now-forgotten super sedan called the XFR-S. It was a rather interesting vehicle. To create it, Jaguar took the XF sedan (300-horsepower 4.2-liter V8), went up to the R version (510-hp supercharged V8), and then went all "fast and furious" from there, creating the XFR-S with 550 hp and a massive rear wing in back like a Porsche GT3 (OK, it wasn’t that massive, but it looked very out of place on a Jaguar).

The car was actually pretty impressive, in the sense that it transformed the relatively staid XF into a true super sedan with a 3.9-second 0-to-60 time and a 186 miles per hour top speed. For some reason, all of the press images also showed the car in a rather unusual bright blue, and many of them were sold that way, though I’m sure they also offered more rational colors. Either way, perhaps sensing that it would be hard to penetrate the M5/E63 AMG market, Jaguar only sold about 100 of these XFR-S sedans here in the United States, and only for the 2014 model year.

As I recall, the XFR-S was a tough sell, even in such limited numbers, and Jaguar hasn’t returned to this segment since. Its current luxury sedans don’t offer ultra-high performance versions that even slightly resemble the craziness of the XFR-S. It may go down as a one-time thing: Jaguar’s brief foray into the world of the super sedan, painted bright blue and full of V8 muscle, before the market shifted towards crossovers and turbocharged V6s.