MEASURING STICK

A PAIR OF FAMILIAR SUV FACES BRING ADVANCED NEW SIX-CYLINDER ENGINES TO A FIERCE UNDER-BONNET BATTLE

- DANIEL GARDNER

I’LL NEVER FORGET the day my high-school history teacher Miss Ashman turned up to a lesson with two black eyes and a nose splinted with more supports than a scaffolder’s roof rack. Turns out, this slight, quiet young lady was a karate expert and the only way her students were ever going to find out was if she sustained some kind of visible injury – a rare occurrence, it turned out. I remember being shocked to learn that a teacher could be conservative and timid during the day but a merciless and efficient fighter when school’s out.

So yes, appearances can be misleading and even when you think you know someone, they can occasionally prove you wrong and surprise you in the most delightful way.

Take the Jaguar F-Pace, for example. When it launched in 2016 it proved a large SUV could be rakishly beautiful, exclusive and agile all at the same time, while Audi’s freshly updated Q5 is the poster child for practical quality.

But both the representatives you see here hide a secret like a history graduate that can crescent kick you in the back of the head while looking you in the eye.

While the F-Pace and Q5 were introduced with a relatively conventional line of engine options, both have been recently treated to a variant that packs in a silky six-cylinder donk boosted by a turbo, an electric supercharger and a mild hybrid system – the F-Pace P400 and the SQ5 respectively.

The result is a pair of engines that manage to be rich in power and torque but ask for relatively little fuel to produce their impressive figures. In the case of the Audi, it uses a 3.0-litre V6 to produce 251kW and 700Nm with claimed economy of 7.0L/100km, while the Jaguar makes 294kW and 550Nm from the same capacity in straight-six configuration and drinks an official 8.7L/100km on the ADR combined cycle.