Yo bruhs...got some seat time in an AMG GTS. Passenger seat time, but I got to start it, rev it, sit in the drivers seat a bit and pull it out of the garage. LOL. It was traded in for an F-Type R at my Jag dealer, and the dealer owner decided to plate it and start driving it around. Car has all of 700 miles on it and he took me for a spin.
First of all, I'm not sure why anyone would trade in an AMG GTS for an F-Type R. Everyone here knows I love my Jags, I'm a hardcore fan at this point. But I'm not blindly loyal. And I think I would ever so slightly prefer the GTS over an F-Type. In fact, all of the Jag employees at the dealer were just as puzzled. The F-Type is an amazing machine, visceral all the way through. But the GTS has an interior that is really in a different category. It's also more refined on the road and better on the track. It has great presence, but looks go to the Jaguar.
Next door to the Jag dealer here is a Mercedes dealer (different owners) and as we pulled out of the lot, they had a brand new C300 Coupe. And sometimes the GTS looked like a really slammed C-class Coupe. The design language is a little too close in that regard. On the other hand, the F-Type has siblings that start at $62K, which dilutes the car image a little bit...although most people still gawk at them as if it were a six-figure supercar.
The sounds go to the F-Type R, but the GTS tries hard and achieves very well. At 8/10ths and on the street, you'd be splitting hairs in deciding which is faster. There's an SVR model coming in a few months which will be priced closer to the GTS (the base F-Type R starts around 25K cheaper) and that'll likely match the GTS on the track and in speed as it makes 600HP with a multitude of overall changes.
But at the same time, when inside the GTS there wasn't a mindblowing sensation that made me feel as if the car outclassed even my four year old XKR in speed (even though it clearly does). The center console may have been more laden with decoration in the Benz, but the seats, overall quality of materials, and the like, are still very high-end on my own car. And in some areas the F-Type R is a small step above my XKR's interior (although it does have more plastics in the center console compared to my all leather XKR and the entire headliner being suede on mine).
So having said that...I still couldn't figure out why anyone would trade one for the other. The F-Type R and the GTS are such similar cars in many ways. I'll put it to you this way, if I owned an F-Type R, I wouldn't trade one for a GTS. If I owned a GTS, I wouldn't trade one for it for an F-Type R. It's about as lateral as a jump as one could have. So I found the whole thing very peculiar. Especially for a car with only 700 miles. My final thought was that maybe it was one of those owners who was fed up with the Benz dealer next door over something stupid? Who knows.
