CARLOS LAGO: That right there is a Jaguar F-PACE.
And what better way to talk about a British vehicle
than by having some British weather?
This cost a lot so we hope you'll appreciate it.
The Jaguar F-PACE falls in an interesting category.
It's not quite a compact SUV even
though it's priced like one and runs in that mix of cars.
This is a 35t Prestige Model, and we'll
explain what that means and we'll walk around and look
at bits and pieces of it next.
There are a lot of automotive designers in the world
but few of them are known by name to industry insiders.
Ian Callum, the design director at Jaguar, is one of them
because the work he's done on the brand for the past couple
of years, if not longer than that, has been extraordinary.
He's developed a really streamlined look
that gives every new Jaguar product a unique identity that
matches everything else in the brand.
What you notice when you're looking at the F-PACE's design
is that it's kind of clutter free.
It's very simple and it kind of has this elegance
that also feels sporty.
I keep coming to the phrase of like athletic elegance.
Up front you see a large front grill,
a couple of different openings beyond that, not much of it
is functional.
But the grills themselves and the size of them
speak to a sort of aggression that the front end
of this vehicle wants to have.
But a couple of the elements appear--
like the headlights and the wheels--
are things that you need to pay careful attention
to because they stand out so much when the rest of the body
is so clean.
As we get to these wheels, these are 19 inch wheels.
You can go as high as 22 inches.
We don't recommend it from F-PACEs
that we've tested because the bigger and heavier
the wheel is, the worse the ride quality and comfort tends
to get.
The 19s seem to be a good match though, you've got
a good amount of tire sidewall.
And as we step a little bit further,
we can look at the general profile
of the F-PACE, which is a really important element
of the vehicle.
This has to both convey a sense of luxury,
a sense of sportiness, a sense of aggression,
and that's difficult to do when you
have to keep in mind that this needs
to accommodate full size adults and their cargo capacity.
One of the big elements is this rear roof line.
Generally, you want this to slope down.
If that slopes down it looks good,
but you also have to keep in mind that like,
hey, humans need to sit back here and they have heads.
But you don't want to interfere with the roof
because that's uncomfortable, you
need to be able to get in and out of the car
without banging your head against the sill there.
And as we work our way to the back
we can admire these tail lights.
These are just good looking tail lights.
They don't need much explanation,
good design seldom does.
Now under the hood of this particular model is a V6.
You have three different engine choices with the F-PACE.
There's a two-liter diesel, a two-liter gas, both of those
are turbocharged and have confusing names.
The diesel is called the 20d.
By Jaguar.
The gasoline turbocharged four cylinder is a two-liter as
well, but it's called the 25t.
And it gets even more confusing with the V6s
because there's only one V6 engine,
it's a three-liter supercharged engine,
and it has two different power levels, 340 or 380.
This is a 340 version.
Jaguar calls this version the 35t, and the high powered 380
horsepower version, the S. If you're
having trouble following along, you're not alone.
Regardless of which engine you choose
you get an eight speed automatic and all-wheel drive
standard on every F-PACE.
Let's take a quick walk-through through the interior
of this Jaguar F-PACE.
Now the start stop button is right here beneath the air
conditioning controls.
And you see the light pulsating before you turn the car on,
it's supposed to make it seem like it has a heartbeat.
Now when the car turns on, the shifter
rises out of the bottom of the center console.
And this rotary shifter is OK, it's fine in use.
It takes a little bit to get used to,
especially during a three-point turn on a crowded street,
but it's something you will get acclimated with just
through ownership and using.
Probably the only downside with this rotary shifter
is the amount of space that it takes up here
in the center console.
Behind the shifter you've got your drive mode selector
and that's going to get you into your sporty settings, your eco
settings, and all that.
In the center console you have two USB ports,
HDMI port, 12-volt port.
Now in behind the center console,
you've got two more USB ports, another 12-volt port,
and this model has heated seats.
Backing up a bit though, this is a Prestige trim.
And that's not the highest end trim,
this is probably more indicative of what
most people are going to end up having in their F-PACE.
The general feel of the material maybe isn't quite up to par
with what we'd expect from like Audi and the Mercedes
Benz of the world.
You kind of sense when you touch everything
there's a lot of hard surfaces that don't feel cheap,
they just maybe not feel the standard
that you might hope this vehicle were to reach.
Other things though that are nice
are definitely the displays.
The gauge cluster looks really nice, it's crisp, it's clear,
it's easy to read.
It has a lot of customization inside of it.
You can make it look different ways,
you can have it show different information,
it can actually take up the entire display,
it can be used as a navigation screen.
Which is kind of wild when you use it for the first time.
I kind of just like having simple gauges,
maybe it's because I'm old fashioned.
The infotainment display is large, again high-resolution,
it looks really good, it reacts very quickly to gestures--
swiping, pinching, zooming, and so on.
And when we get into the navigation system
here too, as I zoom way out and zoom way in,
you can see it works generally well.
One disappointment is this system
does not support Apple CarPlay or Android Auto,
and we like those systems a lot.
This system is not quite as powerful,
but does a decent job at giving you
a lot of the same functionality.
So we're kind of back and forth on whether it's worth the money
or not.
Now up top we have this massive sunroof that lets a lot of sun
in.
And it's surprising when you open it
up for people who haven't been in this car before
and they're kind of like, wow, that's
a that's a really big sunroof.
Another one of the curious things
that happens in this Jaguar is that the window controls
and the seat and door locks are kind of bisected.
You have the seat memory and the door locks down here,
and the window controls up here.
I've driven this car a couple of times
and always think that the window controls should be down here,
but that's something you would just get used to over time.
When you fire up the Jaguar F-PACE
you hear something that you may not expect from a compact SUV.
[ENGINE REVVING]
CARLOS LAGO: That's a bit of engine noise.
The F-PACE allows a bit more engine sound
to come into the interior and that
reinforces the sort of sporty driving characteristics
Jaguar wants to have as a brand.
This SUV accelerates adequately enough, more than adequately.
The engine comes to life in a vocal manner,
in a way that can get you down the road very quickly.
It's something that does end up feeling sporty,
again even though this vehicle is not intended to do that.
And another thing that helps reinforce
that is the tuning of the suspension and the steering.
You want them to respond in ways that back up what
that engine is barking out.
And they do that, sometimes to the detriment.
The suspension, the way this rides,
can be a little bit firm, you feel a lot more of the road
than you would get in more luxury oriented vehicles.
There's a few more bounces, there's a few more shuddering,
there's a little bit more in terms of body control-- or body
motions that you get because it is a little bit firmer.
The upside of that, of course, is
the ride is a bit more lively in terms of handling,
it's a little bit more fun to drive this thing.
So if you have a favorite on-ramp or a favorite section
of road that you take on your commute,
this brings out some of the more fun elements of driving that.
Now we have various drive modes.
I'm in the key up normal setting,
but I can hit this button here and go
to a dynamic setting which makes the tachometer turn red
and puts the transmission, it seems,
in a more aggressive shift schedule.
So it's more likely to hold revs as you drive.
Now this is good if you really want to enjoy a curvy road.
I got to say, for a SUV as big as this one
is, it actually does pretty well.
I'm generally not a fan of the way V6 engines sound,
but this one is on the nicer side of the spectrum,
I've got to admit.
You don't hear that supercharger,
you just hear more of the exhaust sound
than the engine sound itself.
And they do a good job of piping that and that
alone into the cabin.
Now let's back it off and go into more of a cruising mode.
And as we slow it back down and kind of
just sort of admire some of the more general qualities
that this vehicle has while you are driving.
The transmission shifts very smoothly,
it seems to engage the right gear pretty much when
you want it to.
And the low end of this V6 delivers enough torque
at the bottom end to make it seem
like it's able to accelerate pretty much regardless of what
the engine speed is.
This wheel feels really nice and precise.
There's not a lot of feel but I have
no doubts when I turn the wheel that I got it right
or that I got it wrong.
You do notice when you back off and start
driving in a more conservative, you know comfortable manner,
a bit of the ride quality comes into play,
and that's again a byproduct of having a sporty set up.
You can get adaptive dampers on the F-PACE
and those have a range of settings
that will soften for more comfortable and relaxed driving
and firm up when you want the body control that you
get from firmer suspension.
Overall this Jaguar F-PACE is a very competent driving vehicle
that's sure to satisfy anybody looking for a compact luxury
SUV, one that doesn't make you feel
like you bought an appliance.
This is a nicely balanced, easily controllable, good sized
SUV overall.
I like it.
That's been a look at the Jaguar F-PACE.
If you want to find out more information,
be sure to visit edmunds.com.
If you want to see more videos, keep it tuned right here.
We're gonna go find the guy who's on the fog machine
and ask it to turn it down.