Car and Driver reports that the 2009 Jaguar XF has some real techno-tricks up its sleeve—and even said that the company now has "a new way of setting motoring fashion." That must be music to Jaguar's ears, considering that they've been stylistically stagnant over the past several decades. Anyway, Jaguar's new sedan has a fancy new auto-manual mode for its six-speed automatic transmission, the report said. The new system is standard on both naturally aspirated and blown eight cylinder models:

"Behold! On startup, a knob rises from the surface of the console to replace the traditional gear lever. It's a great act, like the deployment of some James Bond just-in-time gizmo. You'll use it surprisingly little, only when you need D or R or the sport mode. Paddles behind the wheel do the moment-to-moment manumatic shifting. And there's no need to dial back to P when you arrive. Push 'Stop,' and the knob retracts and returns itself to park automatically."

The car's glove box also opens with the brush of a finger on a "target" that's hidden in the burl wood. Doesn't in-car GPS suddenly feel so... last year?