But the Jaguar conjures a warmer and more inviting feel: its palette of decorative materials is wider and more imaginative, its ambience richer and a shade more luxurious. Sure, it doesn’t have back seats, but that sizeable boot is usefully bigger than any one storage space the 911 has.

And so if you had to pick one of these cars just to use as personal transport for an undefined period of time, without a thought given to how much fun you might have in the process, I’m not totally convinced the Porsche would be the automatic choice. It has been executed with typical German precision and attention to detail, so the sat-nav is easier to programme and more reliable and it’s easier to find the instrumentation mode that suits you best. By contrast, on one occasion when I pressed the button that I imagined would activate the voice recognition on the Jaguar’s navigation system, all it did was mute the radio. So much for the British technological avant-garde.

But it’s the Jaguar that does better for refinement and rolling comfort – and that means it would double up better as the grand touring part-timer. The Porsche’s ride is noisier than the Jaguar’s (on those optional mixed-sized RS Spyder Design 20/21in alloys and optional PASM lowered sports suspension, admittedly), and it lacks a little bit of the supple dexterity that typically characterises mid-range 911 variants. It reads just that little bit too much information from the road surface for ideal daily driven comfort, you’d say. The Jaguar, by contrast, can get feisty and reactive over an uneven surface, but it’s quieter and better isolated on most others. The Porsche, being a rear-engined 911, is also less naturally stable at high speeds than the Jaguar and more easily disturbed by camber and crosswind, both of which have a part to play in defining how wearing it might be to use.

Not that a 911 is ever likely to wander quite as far off course – as some might say the narrative thread of this test already has. Hands up, you got me: not many people buy sports cars for their refinement levels or the rich luxury feel of their interiors. It’s just possible that I’ve been finding reasons, thus far, to award extra credit to a charismatic and likeable British alternative that – you’ve guessed it – can’t quite match even a pretty sub-optimally equipped 911 for driver appeal. That’s a shame and not exactly a shock, but if you don’t do these things properly, you never really know.

There’s just a bit too much of the F-Type R to allow it to hit the same dynamic heights as the Porsche or to impress its driver quite as clearly at both low speeds and high. It has too much power, too much weight and, at least for this tester, at times a shade too much mechanical grip, traction and lateral stiffness necessary to harness the aforementioned and to move it all around to be good for the car’s wider sporting appeal. It might have newly configured suspension and better rear axle location, but the F-Type R remains the burly, surly hotrod that you guide with plenty of concentration and a slightly wary hand.