2007 Jaguar XK

This new XK convertible is an easy car to underestimate. At first acquaintance it seems docile, mellow, and not at all likely to get in your face. Also hard to forget is that at 300 horsepower the XK is the least powerful car in this test. In the first few minutes after you start the car and drive off, the impression of a mellow and quiet grand tourer is reinforced by a pliant ride, smooth automatic upshifts, a nicely weighted but calm steering wheel, and seats that seem too softly padded for aggressive driving.
Then, as the miles pile on and the pace picks up, the XK seems to amp up its feedback until, at crazy speed — when you're braking hard into a turn, tugging on the paddles, and hearing the dual exhausts bark their baritone song as the computer matches revs — driver and car are suddenly dancing in precise rhythm.
That happened once we'd taken to the hills, but first there were some surprises at the test track.
After declaring the car "a cruiser" in his first logbook notes, tech editor VanderWerp found himself surprised by the car's good acceleration, despite its not having substantially more power than previous Jags. "The weight loss and the quick-shifting tranny must help a lot," he wrote. Then we moved to the lane-change exercise, where the XK cut effortlessly through the cones. We held down the stability-control button, as instructed, to raise the intervention threshold and could detect no more than one brief brake application to settle the car during runs that were more than 2 mph better than the second-quickest car.