Dialled Down

The F-pace with a smaller heart. Wait, wasn’t this meant to be a sporty UV?

- Raunak Ajinkya

Less is more. That simple string of words is perhaps the ideal way to look at this, the F-Pace 20d Prestige, in its entirety. Indeed, the World Car of the Year 2017 deserves every accolade it’s so far managed to bag, but I believe the shiny white example you see on these pages might just be the best one you can get your hands on in India.

Allow me to backtrack a bit. When it first came to us, the F-Pace had a 3.0-litre V6 under the hood that made 296 bhp and, in general, it was a bit much. Don’t get me wrong; more power is always a welcome thing, and while the 30d was a tremendous car to drive, it perhaps wasn’t as cohesive as it could be. Now, in my books, putting in a smaller engine that makes less power is hardly ever the way to go about things, regardless of the car in question, but here, it works. Replacing the 3.0-litre V6 is a 2.0-litre 4-cylinder diesel engine that makes 178 bhp and 43.8 kgm. Now, those figures seem respectable on their own, but when you couple them to a car that weighs nearly 1.8-tonnes, things don’t seem as bright anymore, do they?