Renaissance Car

Jaguar’s first SUV has already bagged ‘World Car of the Year’ at the New York International Auto Show. But just how good is the F-Pace?

- Parth Charan

Confession: I’ve never been too chuffed about sports SUVs as a concept. They’re an incredible feat of engineering, the likes of which couldn’t have existed as recently as 20 years ago. But, like ‘brogue sneakers’ or sporks, the idea seems rather forced, almost comical from a purist’s point of view. However, singularity of purpose is a bit of an anachronism in an age where your watch can monitor your heart rate while simultaneously operating a fleet of drones.

Twenty years ago, if you took a large SUV around a sharp curve at 130kph, you’d find it securely wrapped around a tree. That seems to have changed, because the Jaguar F-Pace does 130kph like it does 60kph – completely unperturbed and oblivious to mild g-forces. Jaguar finally threw in the towel and adapted to the times, but it’s done so in a fashion that’s typically Jaguar. The fact that it decided to preface the SUV’s name with an ‘F’ denotes that it’s pretty keen on pushing the sports agenda. Jaguar wants to tell you that its first SUV isn’t one that happens to also be a sports car – rather, it’s the other way around. To the carmaker’s credit, however, where the F-Pace differs from other luxury SUVs is that, even in standard form, it retains the dynamism and agility inherent to modern-day Jags, while it shares more with the XF than the F-Type in design.