Jaguar's first-ever SUV has plenty of sport and just enough utility for shoppers. The 2017 F-Pace is engaging to drive and offers luxury appointments in the cabin, but rear visibility is hindered by its sloping roofline.
Transcript
(engine revving) Jaguar's first SUV the F-Pace has plenty of sport and just enough utility for a lot of shoppers. You'll want to weigh that against a few downsides though.
Now the F-Pace takes a lot of Jaguar cues and just throws them onto an SUV body here. Things like squinting headlights, very tall grill, Jaguar's traditional taillights. Really look like an SUV version of the XF sedan which actually shares this platform. So just how big is the F-Pace? Well, it actually slots in terms of length, somewhere between a compact and midsize SUV, I think BMW X3 or X5. But it's quite wide. More than five inches wider than the X5. And all that width will keep you from really wanting to throw the F-Pace around on narrow, curvy back roads, but it's a lot of fun to drive nonetheless. 340 horsepower here in our test car. Thanks to a smooth rubbing supercharged three liter V6 engine, which makes the 35t badging on the rear of the car make all the sense in the world. Lots of smooth gear, strong revving power, really easy to drive very, very quickly. Especially thanks to a very responsive accelerator pedal and automatic transmission. Jaguar doesn't really get enough credit for having responsive accelerators, especially since a lot of European competitors don't have very responsive accelerator pedals. Very smooth linear steering as well. Affirm the controlled ride, not too much body roll, really a lot of fun to drive. Now inside the F-Pace has its share of premium materials with an optional vinyl wrap dashboard, that's stitched here in our test car. A really convincing stuff looks and feels like real leather. As far as utility, Jaguar does throw a few areas here to stash kind of cell phones and sunglasses. And the backseat pretty reasonable for adults as well. A couple of drawbacks though, even though the SUV is really wide, it's a very wraparound cockpit here, very large center tunnel, kind of leading into the console area. Very thick doors. Larger drivers might find that their knees and their hips are kind of hemmed in a little bit too much. Visibility as well. All that sleekness on the outside. Doesn't exactly translate into good sight lines on the inside, where you get a very small rear window, kind of a low windshield and very thick eight pillars. Now on the electronics front, our car is an obstacle 10.2 inch display and 12.3 inch virtual gauges. Now those gauges can be oriented to actually show a map across the entire screen, similar to Audi's virtual cockpit system, that kind of pairs down essential information to show at the bottom. As far as the center display goes, pretty responsible overall, easy to kind of zoom in, zoom out, scroll around the map, sort of at smartphone speed there with the touch screen, but no Apple CarPlay or Android auto. And we've observed a few glitches in our test car here. Some screen freezes while on certain stations. Now those multimedia glitches are definitely cause for concern, but Jaguar addresses any reliability questions with one heck of a warranty as luxury brands go. 60,000 miles of bumper to bumper coverage, plus free maintenance along the way. Jaguars struck while the iron was hot. Launching its first SUV as consumer demand for all SUV's sores. If you're in the market for a luxury model, the F-Pace might not be a bad place to start.
