Blog : Seeing the F-Pace in the wild for the first time

Keith Adams

F-PACE

Out on my travels, and it was good to enjoy the first really sunny weekend of the year. The sun was shining, the roads were nice and open and there was plenty of nice metal out there to truly appreciate. Bimbling through Oakham, I spotted this rather nice F-Pace, and realised that it was, in fact, the first time I’d seen one out in the wild – I ended up taking a few moments to have a good look around what is undoubtedly Jaguar’s most important car for years.

The good news is that photographs don’t tend to do the car justice – although it’s effectively a Jaguar XE/XF on stilts, with elements of the F-Type thrown in for good measure, it gels nicely on the road. There are curves and haunches, as you’d expect with a post-Millennial Jaguar, with the usual design signatures thrown in for free – and, even in this high-riding crossover, it seems to gel perfectly well.

Will this car bring much-needed volume to Jaguar? Undoubtedly… One only needs to look at the success of the Porsche Cayenne, a car which in 2002, when it was launched, was lambasted by a huge swathe of enthusiasts for sullying the brand. And yet, almost 15 years on, this crossover is both accepted as part of the automotive scene, and recognised as being the car that saved Porsche. It also proved that something SUV-shaped could be both good to drive and still have clear marque DNA – not bad for a car so closely related to the Volkswagen Touareg.

The Jaguar F-Pace is far purer a concept than that – and, at launch, it’s offered with some very interesting-looking engine variations that provide genuine performance out of the box. It also clearly looks like it will coexist quite happily with its Land Rover brethren, without the feeding off it. That’s certainly the case if Volkswagen and Porsche (and Audi’s!) experience is anything to go by.

It has success written all over it – which is great news for a company that’s already growing month-on-month. A nice thought to contemplate on a very nice, sunny English weekend.

Porsche Cayenne

Keith Adams

20 Comments

  1. Saw one in the wild too last week for the first time and thought it looked amazing. Even more tellingly, one of my non-car-people colleagues saw it too and asked “Is that a new Jaguar” so the family DNA/Brand awareness is clearly strong

  2. I see one regularly on Coal Pit Lane (the very new meets the very old!)
    The big mouth and high stance looked a little threatening head-on, but I’m getting used to it.

    New topic: two friends have recently upgraded from X-type and S-type to XF’s, so there’s some marque loyalty out there.

  3. Anything which takes sales of the hideous-looking BMW X6 has to be a good thing.

    And although I’m not a big fan of the category as a whole, the F-PACE looks better than its competition.

    • The X6 tops the hideous meter, closely followed by the X4. The fact that BMW offers big discounts on both of them comes as no surprise.

      • I agree that the X6 is a hideous looking thing, as are most of these SUV’s. (I do think however that from the pictures, the Jaguar looks the best of the bunch).
        To steal a quote fro Sniff Petrol about SUV’s: “In related news, Land Rover is reported to be having similar trouble with a new autonomous ‘off-road’ setting on the Range Rover Sport. ‘It thinks we mean mount the pavement outside the Aga shop in Wilmslow,’ admitted a spokesman”

  4. I did see one too last week, UK registered, looking very much like a Jaguar registered car (there is quite a bit of development going on in my area, I have seen them in camouflage a few times before) – driver and passenger were staring at the light blue Maxi passing them though…. 🙂

    It is a rather generic SUV to me eyes, looking larger than the Q5 or Macan – that’s not to say it looks fat like the original Cayenne pictured above.

  5. Saw a factory-fresh F-Pace this morning on the A45 just outside the NEC and five minutes away from the Lode Lane plant, on a transporter. It had the lead position at top front, with Range Rovers filling all the other slots. Couldn’t help thinking that all of them looked more interesting with all their protective tapes on the rear quarter panels and window surrounds…

  6. I hated Jaguar for wanting to create a crossover at first, now I’ve warmed to the idea and hope this does well. Under TATA, Jaguar have buried the obsession with sixties retro, which was doing nothing for the brand, and have brought out some very good cars in recent years that are taking on the opposition.
    Out of interest, today I saw a crummy looking S type, driven by someone who looked a bit dubious, and am so glad Jaguar has moved on from this not very good sixties pastiche that Ford seemed to love in the nineties.

  7. It’s fair to say that this sort of car is not for me at any price, and I shall wait until I have seen one in the metal before finally making a judgement, but the photographs do absolutely nothing for me, with the whole thing being far too fussy as is typical of anything Callum has influenced, and the rear being reminiscent of the Evoque , looking squashed and claustrophobic , albeit not quite to the same extent as the Evoque

  8. They look alright in real life, by contrast I saw a white Bentyaga last week, looked absolutely awful.

  9. Just a few weeks to this year’s National Police Fleet show at Telford – will Jaguar up the ante and display a liveried F-PACE to take on the might of the BMW X5 in a very lucrative marketplace?

    I am also hoping (against hope?)that MG Motor shows its new GS and that LDV sneak in a new Maxus, along with the good looking G10; I took a liking to the latter at the recent CV show at the NEC.

    • Lucrative? Supplying police forces?! Really?!!

      I’d rather leave it to the likes of BMW to subsidise the police fleets with epic discounts and ruinous service commitments!

  10. It better look better in the flesh, because if the Spanish Police hit a person with a truncheon like that’s been hit with the ugly stick there’d be a UN enquiry and probably sanctions.
    The tail lights work well in the XF car, they make this look like an elderly overweight Chinese ancestor, and the spoiler looks like a Neanderthals brow ridge.
    In short we have a ghastly mess.
    Nil Point, and someone pass the vomit bag.

  11. I hope it does really well. I would like to see Jaguar/Land Rover surpass BMW, Mercedes, etc in sales one day. My wife has owned two Jaguars, an X Type and an XJ, and the quality of both were flawless.

  12. Seen a few on the road now and they look really good in real life, have a strong presence.
    Also seen a couple of Bently SUV’s (I do a lot of miles) and I am genuinely astounded that such an ugly/bland car was signed off and given such a prestigious badge. Looks like an old Korean 4×4, I say old as the newer ones look far superior to this. I was then astounded to read Autocar say its better than a Range Rober. Crackpots.

  13. Nice car, looks great. As you’ve mentioned in the article, Jaguar have done well to take a crossover shape and incorporate some recognisable Jaguar styling themes without it looking awkaward. If I had the urge to be more flash, I’d have one of these instead of our CRV.

  14. Not sure of the point of it but if the German manufacturers build a vehicle in this catagory Jaguar I suppose that the company must follow the trend. However at least it’s built in it’s country of origin unlike it’s German rivals the VW group Cayenne,Q7 & Touareg are built in Slovakia and the BMW & Mercedes offerings are built in the USA in the Deep South. I can’t help but wonder if the new car won’t eat into Range Rover sales,sill you never know we might get a Rover sports car

  15. As far as the press are concerned these seem to do well against the competition in 2.0 litre diesel guise when they seem to go neck and neck with the likes of the BMW X3 and JLR’s own Discovery Sport (although the Disco usually wins).In 3.0 guise though it always seems compared to the Porsche Mecan – which is actually cheaper and seems to wipe the floor with the Jag. The Jags cheap and nasty interior and Amstrad infotainment excused on the cheaper versions count heavily against it the higher up the price range you go.

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