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"         3rd \u2014 Jaguar XK8 544.9 points                   The Jaguar XK8 has been around for a while now, but its age works in its favor: classic lines, a familiar cockpit, a powerful and responsive V-8, and no less a Jaguar despite its influences of Ford stewardship. The XK8 is a fine civilized GT, a car that makes you feel elegant just to be driving it.                                                       Although the Jag is beginning to feel its age a bit next to these newer designs, it continues to be thoughtfully updated and remains a delightful car to drive in many ways. Despite the subtle Ford-ization of Jaguar, the XK8 still offers that &amp;quot;fuselage&amp;quot; feeling of sitting in a long, tube-shaped body, with an expansive hood in front and a long, tapered tail behind you. The interior is snug without being cramped, and the full-width wood dash, with its recessed, vintage-looking gauges, is unlike any other modern car. It feels very much like a Jaguar \u2014 and quite English \u2014 in the best traditional sense, and yet the ghost of unreliability past seems to have been thoroughly expunged.   For at least one of us, the Jaguar finished a close second in this comparison based on its styling, luggage space, ride quality and all-around charm, but it fell down in rating points on a couple of fronts.   First, it scored rather poorly (just above the Lexus) in &amp;quot;driving excitement.&amp;quot; Compared with some of the shorter, quicker cars in our group, the Jag feels a bit long and ponderous on a tight, winding mountain road. Steering is excellent in feel and quickness, grip is high and shock damping well controlled, but the car lacks the tidy tossability of, say, the Porsche 911.   The Jag was fifth through the slalom at 64.0 mph (just a tick behind the Mercedes) and it tied the SL for fourth around the skidpad, at 0.85g, so it&amp;#039;s still operating in a fairly elevated universe of handling and adhesion at the test track, helped this year by wider rear tires and the same large 18-in. wheels formerly used only on the XKR. On the road, it&amp;#039;ll easily keep up with any car here, but doesn&amp;#039;t feel quite as quick and agile doing it. The XK8 really is a GT car, in the civilized, elegant sense of the term, in a group that includes a couple of thinly disguised, high-voltage sports cars.   The Jag&amp;#039;s new-generation AJ 4.2-liter V-8 has a personality that follows the same pattern. It delivers a mellow stream of power at all speeds (294 bhp at 6000 rpm) and has a delightfully hard-hitting clout at stoplights that shoots you effortlessly ahead of the other traffic, but it doesn&amp;#039;t have the edgy, barely suppressed fury of some of the others. Not as exciting, perhaps, but the engine is still your big, smooth friend, with 303 lb.-ft. of torque on tap at 4100 rpm. You have to go to the supercharged, caffeinated XKR if you want a higher-pitched song under the hood.   Automatic shifts are appropriately posh and unintrusive to power flow, and the delicate detents on the J-pattern shift lever allow you to hand-pick your gears with a light touch when you&amp;#039;re really hustling along. A few drivers thought they were a little too light and wished for a more defined feel to the stops.   The Jag finished third in our comparison and scored three bests of category. It had the biggest trunk, was judged to have the best styling in the group and ties for first in its EPA-average fuel economy.   All that useful trunk space (it became the camera equipment hauler on our trip) can be attributed to the XK&amp;#039;s convertible top, which folds down into an external pile with a snap-cover over it, rather than folding into the trunk. The top goes up and down with just the push of a button, but you have to get out and unsnap the cover before you raise it. Top down, the Jag has a very pleasant level of wind flow and noise in the cockpit, incidentally, only lightly tossing one&amp;#039;s golden or possibly graying locks.   If the XK8 isn&amp;#039;t the nimblest-handling or quickest car here, it&amp;#039;s still an impressive all-rounder that provides a lot of visual and dynamic motoring pleasure on the road, and it&amp;#039;s an easy car to live with in daily use. Looks good too. The end of our trip left one staffer casually combing the want-ads to check on the supply of affordable, slightly used XK8 convertibles. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-comparison-tests/reviews/a19041/wind-sun-and-stars-2003-jaguar-xk8/>