Jaguar XKR-S Convertible

Windscreen repair man does a cracking job on our sun-starved ragtop.

So guess what happened the day before the nice man from Autoglass came to fix the stone chip that I’d picked up a week earlier? I was driving along the M25, minding my own business at half-five in the morning when, dink (or more like a great big smack, actually), the poor old Jag’s windscreen took yet another pasting, from yet another stone that had pinged its way off the back of a lorry - this time on the passenger side. And this impact was a whole lot worse, leaving a good half-inch gouge in the glass and two nasty little crack lines that looked just like crow’s feet. This time I was convinced the damage could not be fixed by one man and his gel.

Jaguar XKR-S Convertible

Wrong. When the man from Autoglass arrived - bang on time - I showed him the first nick and he said, almost as if he were in the TV ad, “Yeah, no worries, I can fix that in 20 minutes.”

But then I showed him the second chip - the bigger one. He frowned and asked when, exactly, it had happened. I told him it had occurred just yesterday and he said, “Fine, no problem. But if you’d left that one for more than a couple of weeks it might have been more of a problem, especially at this time of year.”

Half an hour later, the Jag’s screen was virtually as good as new. Only if you look very closely can you now spot the faintest little mark. And best of all, there was no bill to pay. Because the car is comprehensively insured, fixes such as these are - for reasons that I still don’t fully comprehend, but approve of 150 per cent - free.

Since then, I’ve had no other dramas driving the XKR-S. It has done just over 6000 miles now, at an increasingly less dreadful average of 20.8mpg. Either the engine is loosening up or I’m driving it more efficiently (or more likely a combination of both), but the fuel economy has climbed from the mid-18s it was returning at the 3000- mile mark. Even the range has risen from sub-300 miles to a theoretical 320-ish if all I’m doing is bumbling along a motorway.

Jaguar XKR-S Convertible - Back

Ultimately, though, the XKR-S isn’t really a bumbling-along kind of a car, even though it’s more than relaxing enough to cover long distances in. At its heart it’s a very sporting GT car, with thundering levels of performance and genuinely decent handling and steering to match.

As such, it also happens to provide the guts of an extraordinary vehicle called the Bowler EXR S (pictured left), which uses exactly the same engine and gearbox as the Jaguar but is based, albeit loosely, on the previous- generation Range Rover. Two more different kinds of driving experience would be hard to imagine, yet they have the same power, present a similar sort of menace in the rear-view mirror and have identical 0-60mph times. Although, having said that, one of them (the Jag, if you couldn’t guess) will be a little bit nicer to drive if and when the long- forgotten sun comes back out.

The Autoglass man inspects the stone chips on the screen.

XKR-S and Bowler EXR S share an engine and gearbox.