Continued: More than just a car, Jaguar XFR is a production

The players in the super-sedan market have much in common -- gorgeous exteriors, heroic wheels and tires, state-of-the-art-electronics and a lot of cowhide.

These cars -- the BMW M5, the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, Cadillac CTS-V, Audi RS6 (not available in the United States) -- all cost $80,000 or more, can dash to 60 mph in less than 5 seconds and pitilessly gnaw the tarmac with more than 500 horsepower.

They are, in other words, pretty much the same.

Indeed, but for their soulful and individualizing details, they are nearly identical, boringly so, at least as far as the typical buyer is concerned. Yes, one car might have a few tenths more of lateral grip (road holding), and another car might have a touch more torque left in the well at, say, 150 mph. But you'd have to drive like a sociopath to coax these differences out.

Endearingly evil

The genius of the 2010 Jaguar XFR lies in its sheer will to be different, its embrace of the singular, even peculiar. This, the mad-with-power version of the mass-market XF, has got extraordinary talent on the road, to be sure. Under the wickedly sculpted hood is a supercharged version of the so-called GEN III 5.0-liter V8, a direct-injection mill wailing its pistons to the tune of 510 horsepower (125 horsepower more than the non-supercharged version) and 461 pound-feet of vertebra-impacting torque. Between the feral induction whine under the hood and the infernal crackling from the quad exhausts, the sound of this car is charmingly, endearingly evil.

So then, immense power, channeled through an adaptive six-speed transmission with manual-shift mode, as well as an electronically controlled rear differential, and 20-inch, 35-series monster tires that grip like a pterodactyl. I rather casually stood on the gas getting onto a Southern California freeway, and it appeared that all the other traffic slowed and stopped as I went screaming past.

Like other cars in this segment, the XFR is equipped with adaptive suspension. It also has a competition mode that sharpens the car's ride and handling and allows you to scrub off a few layers of pricey Italian rubber.

Put the shifter into Sport mode and the transmission gets downright feisty, with epic rev-holding at the engine's redline and Ducati-like upshifts.

But perhaps the most useful button in the whole car is the Automatic Speed Limiter, which helpfully resists the inevitable throttle creep these high-powered cars tempt you into on the open road. You may think of it as a "Keep Out of Jail Free" card.

But all of the cars in this segment blow minds. This is the nature of performance engineering, to set and exceed a given set of benchmarks, then set about to exceed the new numbers. Performance is easy. Charisma is hard.

The XFR has oodles. Much of it is carried over from the stock XF and, I must say, when I drove that car on a short media event two years ago, I didn't really appreciate the Jag's flair for the dramatic, its heightening of the occasion. When you get in the XFR -- it already senses the key in your pocket -- the start button flashes with a cardiac-like pulse.

At first I thought this was kind of cheesy, but then I got in the car at night, in the dark, and the cheery red rhythm really made me feel as if I had a companion. Press the start button and the cylindrical aluminum gearshift knob (mint green backlighting, no less) rises out of the center console. That's novel -- and really cool. At the same time, the climate vents in the dash rotate open in a synchronized display.

What we have here is stagecraft. The Jag's curtain-raising effects might at first seem like gimmicks, but the more you live with the car, the more you appreciate the subtle momentousness of the cabin electronics. Within a week of driving the XFR, I had bonded with it.

Good kitty. Nice kitty.