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Mid-size sedan: Jaguar XF Supercharged
Starting price: $62,975
Power: 420 hp 4.2-liter V-8
2nd place : BMW 550i
3rd place: Audi S6

If Jaguar's new owners, India's Tata Motors, needed any convincing about whether the British marque was capable of building great cars, the XF surely put those to rest.

The sexy XF is one of the freshest and chicest designs around, and compared to the competition, it's loaded for the money. Remarkably, the XK serves up that ever-elusive "customer surprise and delight" that car marketers drone on about but rarely deliver.

To wit: The start-stop button silently heart-throbs in red -- ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom -- and on start-up, all air vents swing open, while the cylindrical gear selector, which sits flush at rest, rises to the occasion. I applaud moving away from those old-fashioned forms and conventional ideas. Oh, and it drives like the wind, too.

NEXT: Large sedan: Mercedes-Benz S550

Last updated July 01 2008: 11:45 AM ET
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