If you want a luxury SUV that ticks all the boxes in terms of price, performance, practicality, comfort and will also get you noticed, you really can’t go wrong with the Jaguar F-Pace
The Sports Utility Vehicle is an oxymoron. Few of them are very sporty but most of them are very utilitarian. Frankly, as vehicles, they are a horrible compromise. And the main reason many people buy such vehicles is to pretend they can climb up the Himalayas. But, when you show them a tough patch in the Aravalis, they really can’t do much. And the ones that can do a bit, they feel far too utilitarian. But the SUV is the way of the world now. Bentley has the Bentayga and lamborghini the Urus, even Rolls Royce is making one. And much like Compact Sedans, once car designers have had a decade or two to play around with the body, they start making them pretty nice.
Which brings us to the Jaguar F-Pace. I had seen this car personally several times at foreign auto shows and even one draped with a Bollywood B-grade starlet at the India launch in Mumbai. But I really hadn’t had a chance to spend some time with it. But over the past two weeks, playing around with the domestically assembled F-Pace, which shed the ridiculous price tag of the launch model, it has found a way into my heart.
But first things first, it is rather ridiculous that Jaguar makes an SUV. Because the other half of that company is called land Rover and with the Discovery and Range Rover that company has been making comfortable, practical and increasingly good-looking off-road vehicles and SUVs since the beginning of time. I don’t know if Jaguar’s ace designer Ian Callum took on the F-Pace as a challenge after the F-Type sportscar but it did make a smidgen of sense given how everyone else was going down the SUV route. That is to say, the Germans had gone down that route. BMW kind of invented the luxury SUV segment with the X5 because the 7-series wasn’t apparently enough and Audi and Mercedes-Benz jumped in as well. Mercedes even dolled up the military G-Wagen with cowhide, wood and whatnot. Every second German luxury brand car sold in India is an SUV. And in the car industry, sales numbers do not lie.
So back to the F-Pace. Once Jaguar had gone down this route they decided to make something really good. Well, really pretty at least. The press fleet I got was this shimmering Cesium Blue colour and my god, did I love its looks. While the XF and the XJ are getting along on age, the F-Pace does take Jaguar’s speed lines from their sedans onto an SUV. Indulge me for a bit here, this car looks like a car, it looks whole and lacks visible compromises that often happen in SUV design. SUVs are functional designs but this one, in this colour and parked outside my house, was pretty.
And it turned heads too. I had this car for two weeks and drove all over the city, even to the Auto Expo in Greater Noida. Everywhere I drove, people stared at it. This really stood out in a traffic jam with its attractive lines and light design. Here is the thing, those who spoke to me about it were wildly off when it came to the price of the vehicle. The F-Pace is currently available only in the top specification Prestige model and has the same Ingenium two-litre diesel engine that does service in other Jaguars and land Rovers. It is rated at 177 horsepower and costs a surprisingly modest Rs 60 lakh. Okay, that isn’t modest but given the three-minute launch model cost over a crore and it isn’t a very small car, this isn’t bad at all. In terms of size, it is larger than the Evoque and Discovery Sport. This is comparable to the Mercedes-Benz GlE in terms of size and that costs almost five lakh more. The only car I could compare this one to in terms of features would be the second-generation Volvo XC60.
So the main question is does this drive wellIJ Frankly, I’d save some money and buy an XE petrol if I really wanted a Jaguar in my life in India. But you know what, this isn’t a bad car at all to drive. Jaguar’s engineers have managed to keep the driving experience on this SUV feel connected and real. Now you wouldn’t throw this into a corner, straight up against the Volvo which is more powerful. But this corners better. In fact, the F-Pace corners better than most other SUVs in the market and if you want some fun with your car, the Jaguar is the way to go. The eight-speed gearbox could be better and the best fuel economy you’ll get will be around 9-10 km a litre. Also this engine is not the best-in-class. JlR India has equipped the F-Pace (and even the Velar) with disappointing stock wheels and ridiculously fat tires. It is almost as if JlR India chose to make this car look unappealing, but just as Deepika Padukone doesn’t need makeup to look pretty, the F-Pace doesn’t either.
Sure, if you want features, the Volvo is a better bet. Then there are the new Audi Q5 and the GlE, which are all nice cars. But the F-Pace is a stunning blend of practicality — did I mention that it is rather roomy at the back and can swallow three large suitcases easily (I tried) and it is a very comfortable cruiserIJ While I cannot claim to understand JlR’s product strategy between all the SUVs they make now, filling every single tiny crevasse of the market (other than a small one), if you want a luxury SUV that ticks all the boxes in terms of price, performance, comfort and will also get you noticed, you really can’t go wrong with this one.