2012 Jaguar XKR-S: Motoramic Drives

When driving 168 m.p.h., you are traveling 250 feet every second. Which means that if you rip past the cluster of sideline photographers at the "five"—the marker indicating that you have 5,000 feet of cleared U.S. Naval Air Facility runway left—and miss the jet mechanic waving the checkered flag at the "four," you have about a count of three before you, and your passenger, and the $133,500 French Racing Blue 2012 Jaguar XKR-S you're piloting, will find it impossible to stop before the tarmac gives way to a baked-mud trench, a pile of hay bales, a stretch of the Sonoran desert, and a five-pin arrangement of the Blue Angels stunt planes that are based here at N.A.F. El Centro.

Unfortunately, the runway's arresting gear has been removed for this exercise. Also unfortunate, the Jaguar's posh cabin is tranquil enough at this potentially terminal velocity for you to hear your passenger not breathing.

Fortunately, a reminiscence of your instructional briefing dawns as you approach the "three," you stomp on the XKR-S's upgraded (though not carbon-ceramic) brakes, and quickly shed velocity, slowing enough to hang a sweeping right off Runway Bravo without pegging the baby-faced sailor flagging your unintended apex. Mission accomplished?

Between here and Coronado, Calif., — an exclusive oceanfront spit that juts up like the middle finger on America's lower left-hand corner — is 117 miles of highly variant geology that looks alternately like: the Iowa plains, Mars, a Cyclops sandbox stocked with enormous rough-hewn brown-sugar cubes, and someplace you'd see Yul Brynner starting a chariot race. The most thermodynamically efficient course through this terrain is not achieved by redlining the Jag's supercharged V-8 in second gear. But we're devoutly felonious when it comes to the laws of physics. (Can joy be measured in joules?) Encouraging our assault is the car's Sport Dynamic mode, in which the XKR-S sails through the twisties with lithe precision, powers out via copious reserves, and trumpets delightfully from its less-restrictive exhaust, making this, the brand's fastest car ever, one howling wolf of a big cat. (Note: auditory benefits are greatly enhanced in the convertible.)