Jaguar Wants To Play With Sibling Land Rover’s Toys, Launches First Performance SUV

You’re not alone if you associated the Jaguar brand with only luxury saloons, sedans and sports cars. That perception stems from the fact that Jaguar has never before ventured into the SUV space, especially considering how popular its sibling Land Rover’s SUVs have been over the years. It now looks like a sibling rivalry might be brewing at the Indian-owned Jaguar Land Rover family.

Bring in Jaguar’s first performance SUV, the F-Pace. The company claims the car “has pure Jaguar DNA of legendary performance, handling and luxury added with space and practicality.”

While we can’t comment on the handling or legendary performance yet, since we are still to take it out for a spin, at first glance, the car does look like it has drawn a fair amount of inspiration from the Jaguar F-Type.

Be it the front grille or sleek headlights or even the rear LED taillights, there’s no doubt that this is a Jaguar product. In fact the taillights bear a striking resemblance to the F-Type.

Under the hood, the luxury crossover SUV will be available in India in two engine options – the 132 kW 2.0 litre Ingenium Diesel and the 221 kW 3.0 litre Diesel– which is interesting considering that the Tata-owned carmaker was among the worst hit by the Supreme Court’s diesel ban earlier this year. In August, the apex court lifted the ban on registration of diesel vehicles with an engine capacity of above 2 litres, but simultaneously introduced a 1 percent environment cess on the ex-showroom price of each such vehicle.

The F-Pace comes with a strong lightweight aluminium body, which the company hopes will make the car lighter and more agile than other performance SUVs.

While the car does come with a 10 inch tablet style touch screen and technologies derived from the F- Type such as ‘torque vectoring’ and ‘adaptive dynamics’, a really interesting feature seems to be the Activity Key. The Activity Key can be worn by the vehicle’s driver like a wristband. It is waterproof and can be used to lock and unlock the car by tapping the tailgate, while leaving the car’s conventional key inside the car.

Jaguar Land Rover India has announced that the F-Pace will have a starting price tag of Rs 68.40 lakh (ex-Delhi).

At that price point and with these features, it seems the F-Pace faces in-house competition from its sibling in the form of the Land Rover Discovery Sport and the Range Rover Evoque and also from its German rivals - the Audi Q5, BMW X5 and Porsche Macan.