Convertible sports car showdown - Jaguar F-type versus Porsche 911 Targa

The Jaguar doesn’t require you to be stationary before its lid does its thing. And I’ve come to rather like how you can drop the roof as soon 
as you enter a 30mph zone, below which speed it’s happy to go up or down.

On a cold motorway commute, popping the roof down as you enter your home town, putting the exhaust into grumpy mode and listening to the crackles for just a few minutes adds vastly to enjoyment of the F-type, I think. And I don’t think 
that you’d bother doing the same 
in the Targa, not least because its rear-slung 3.4-litre flat six engine doesn’t deliver the same urgent aural thrills as the supercharged 3.0-litre V6 in the Jaguar.

Not that it’s without relative merit. The 911 makes peak power, 345bhp of it, at 7400rpm – sports car revolutions. The Jaguar’s all done by then, its peak output, 375bhp, made at 6500rpm. You might argue that there’s something more ‘sporting’ about the Porsche’s gearbox, too: a seven-speed PDK auto that adds £2298 to the Targa 4’s £86,377 price. 

Read the full Jaguar F-Type review

But the truth of it is that, although PDK has come of age in this generation of the 911, dealing with upshifts with seamless ability and revving on downshifts as accurately and positively as it ought to, there’s not a great deal wrong with the 
hook-up of the Jaguar’s eight-speed 
torque-converter automatic.

Granted, there’s less smoothness as it shifts up, particularly on part-throttle around town, but the 
lock-up occurs almost as soon as you’re rolling, so there’s precious little ‘slush’ about what we’d have once called a slushmatic. Besides which, it’s standard and makes the Jaguar look like conspicuously good value at £67,535. This is not a typical twin test for that precise reason. 

Pitching the Targa against a rival isn’t totally straightforward, after all. It deliberately occupies a place where, around it, there aren’t too many rivals. But the truth is that both of these do more or less the same job and the chances are that, if you can afford one, you can afford the other; depending on spec, they’ll most likely be a couple of hundred quid apart and about £1000 a month.

The Targa goes some way to justifying its extra price by, despite occupying much less road space, being the vastly more practical car of the two. It has vestigial rear chairs, in which a child or a mate on the way home from school or the pub respectively will gladly sit to stay out of the rain.

There’s half a chance that their gear will fit in the front-mounted boot, too, whereas the Jaguar’s boot, in the normal place, is shallow and there is no rear accommodation at all. The front seats can’t be pitched back quite so far as in the Porsche, either. 

The differences are a side effect partly of the mechanical layout – front-engined versus rear-engined, the latter making quite a lot of sense from a packaging viewpoint – and partly it’s a steel-mixed metal shell versus an aluminium one. Aluminium is light, but tends to occupy a bit more space to achieve a given stiffness.

Ah, stiffness: traditionally the downfall of the open-topped roadster. But neither feels particularly unrigid. In fact, the Porsche, particularly, seems to 
give less away over the coupé 
than we’ve come to learn that the F-type roadster does to its hard-topped sibling.

But both are fun to drive. The 911, despite the extra girth over the coupé, is keen and incisive and steers with immaculate precision. Its trademark Germanic heft around the straight-ahead quickly melds into engaging, accurate steering, and it corners well. 

The Jaguar feels a touch more relaxed. It rides better – around town, both are a touch jiggly, but neither is harsh once you’ve got some speed up – and feels a mite less agile. But the handling balance is beautiful and the power output with which to exploit it is quick and able.

The Porsche has a great engine, too, but although its power arrives smoothly and response is instant, it takes a little longer to get wound up.

Which is better? Which wins? Honestly, it depends. The Porsche is more accommodating but is extremely satisfying to its core. The Jaguar is showier, noisier and a bit more old-fashioned in feel.