The interior of the supercharged Jaguar XE accentuates its power

The new Jaguar XE. I am a petrolhead first and foremost, and to a petrolhead, cars don’t come any better than the little kitten. PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • To get in, use the keyless entry system (key in pocket, car senses key, car lets you in; but you have to pull the door handle yourself — this is a car, not a restaurant).
  • The recipe is perfect: compact size, engine at the front, gearbox in the middle, power to the back and top it all off with some forced induction — either turbo or supercharger, your choice.
  • The car drives nicely. There is no jerkiness at all to the accelerator; power is fed in an oily manner whenever you throttle up, as well as taken away imperceptibly on a closed throttle. It is like being served by a particularly skilled waiter in a high-end restaurant.

We left things off last week on the declaration that I was not just enamoured by the new Jaguar XE, I was besotted with it. It may have been hard to see why: what with the cut-price building blocks and apparent lack of practicality; but then again I am a petrolhead first and foremost, and to a petrolhead, cars don’t come any better than the little kitten.

The recipe is perfect: compact size, engine at the front, gearbox in the middle, power to the back and top it all off with some forced induction (either turbo or supercharger, your choice). The paddle-shift tranny is just icing on a very appealing cake. This is what the Jaguar was like to drive:

To get in, use the keyless entry system (key in pocket, car senses key, car lets you in; but you have to pull the door handle yourself — this is a car, not a restaurant) to gain access. The driver’s seat and the steering column both allow for an infinite adjustment of driving position to suit almost all body types, but how infinite is infinite?

There is reach and height adjustment for the steering column (what, no rake?) while the seats move back, forth, up, down and tilt almost every which way to cater for all driving preferences, be it the stretched out, laid back rapper-style pose, or the bolt upright, secretary favourite of someone using a typewriter on a taller-than-usual desk. Oddly enough I came close but didn’t quite find my favourite position. This is why.

The Interior of Jaguar XE. PHOTO | COURTESY

The XE’s cockpit is not entirely dissimilar to that of the original Mercedes-Benz CLS Class, in that it creates a pillbox effect. One feels that one is seated deep within the car, and this feeling is further accentuated by an unusual design feature: on the top of the dashboard is what, for lack of a better description, looks like a little inch-high wall where the windscreen meets the bonnet.

It feels like one is peeping over a bulwark in a foxhole somewhere on the front lines. My own preference is to sit high up (bzzzzzzt.... seat slowly goes up electrically to maximum height and my scalp is now brushing the glass roof.... bzzt... a little lower down.... bzzt.... lower.... bzzt.... perfect!) where I can stare down the bonnet and see the road surface immediately ahead of the car.

There is no point seeing far into the horizon if it means smashing into potholes and ruining the lovely low profile running gear. I need to see potholes before I can feel them.

The steering wheel too has to be adjusted. The optimum reach is easily attainable, but the height proves to be a snag. It won’t go high enough to suit my lofty perch. That means I have to ..... bzzzt.... lower my seat again .... bzzt .... until the steering wheel is at a perfect position, but now I can’t see the immediate surface ahead of me as well as I want. Oh well.....

*Plus point: the seat and steering adjustments are fast, smooth and quiet enough; unlike the Range Rover Vogue where fiddling with the rear seats causes some squeaking as leather brushes against leather.

*Minus point: that bulwark. It is also there in the XJ saloon and it sports a Jaguar badge on it, but is it really necessary?

Visibility, folks, vi-si-bi-li-ty! 

FIRE HER UP

Jaguar XE's rotary gear knob gives you eight shifts. Eight-bloody-shifts! PHOTO | COURTESY

One press of the Start-Stop button and she growls to life. This is the 2.0 litre turbo I am starting with (best for last, if you ever want to be fair in these tests). The instrument panel is familiar: the centre LCD display is modular across the entire JLR range while the dials that flank it are evocative of the F Type. The wheel is small, chunky and grippy (try not to sweat though); falling easily to hand. You want to touch it, caress it, slide your fingerprints all over the rim. This is good, you think. The idling is barely there: it is hard to tell whether or not the engine is running without checking the tach to see if the needle is above zero. Foot on the brake, turn the rotary knob three clicks to the right and release the brake. Creep forward.

There is no transmission shock whatsoever. The car just eases off as silkily as the best engineered Mercedes. This is really good. The view out is not obscured, the mirrors are well placed and... wait, I can’t see out the back. Actually I can, but not as well as I’d want to. The angle of the rear window, dipping roofline and rear headrests are collaborating to make the rear view a bit limited. Oh well....

The car drives nicely. There is no jerkiness at all to the accelerator; power is fed in an oily manner whenever you throttle up, as well as taken away imperceptibly on a closed throttle.

It is like being served by a particularly skilled waiter in a high-end restaurant: prompt, effective but never intrusive. The brakes work well too, one can tailor their stopping power to one’s needs and unlike local politicians, they are effective without being grabby. They can be relied on.

The steering system is sublime. It is what we call EPAS: electric power-assisted steering. This is not the point at which you, the spirited enthusiast, put away the newspaper disgustedly thinking “Guy has lost it”; no I haven’t lost it — if anything, I have found it. The wheel is light and twirly at parking speeds, weighting up gradually the more you pile on the speed.

This is very helpful, if you have ever wound a car up to the unused end of the speedometer. It pays to have that weight when rocketing along at illegal speeds.

Not that we are doing illegal speeds. We are in Cape Town traffic. It is not gnarly per se, but the convoy is breaking up into little pieces courtesy of the traffic lights. We are at risk of losing each other before we’ve even left the town limits. To try and keep up, there are moments of accelerator-stomping urgencies at every green light and... giggling gadzooks, this car can pull!

The power delivery is surprisingly linear for a small engine with a single turbo. If you are keen you can tell when the turbine starts spooling up, but like the other non-starters, you have to be really looking to even notice.

However, at full tilt the engine betrays its origins: like the Evoque and the Disco Sport, it tends to get a little shouty when whipped. There is a subtle gruffness to it; not uncharismatic, but not very Jaguar-like either. The vocal response accompanies a cat-and-mouse game of tag with the supercharged versions and at break time, the general consensus among our excited throng is that much as the bigger engine has more power, the turbo car can keep up.

That’s what they think. It depends on who is driving.

 

THE BLOWN VERSION

The supercharged 3.0 litre shares most of the driving niceness with the 2.0-litre turbo. Smooth, gentle, progressive inputs lead to smooth, gentle, progressive results. Both cars get excitable when Dynamic mode is selected, like a Rottweiler on a leash, just itching to dart off and destroy whatever lies ahead. The excitable nature is not jumpiness; it’s more like a nervousness: gears hold longer, throttle inputs are sharper and there is the feeling that one ill-timed prod of the hot pedal could surprise someone.

That is, until you get out of town. The roads get emptier, windier, more scenic and more challenging, and that is when the red mist descends over our eyes.  There is tarmac begging to be torn and corners begging to be carved; and carve them we will. You wait and see.

Snick the rotary gear knob one more click to the right (into “S”: Sport). Now the gears have to be changed manually; and there are 8 of them. Just south of the gear knob are the performance setting buttons (Eco—pah!; Normal and Dynamic). We go Dynamic. The whole dashboard glows a faint red, almost pink. Double-click on the left paddle to shift down into second gear and lift the throttle. There is a crackly overrun that sounds lovely and the revs soar a little. Foot still off the accelerator: we need the car ahead of us to put several acres of land between us for us to do what we are about to do.

When we are sure the other XE is far enough, we go for it. Foot down. Goodbye, 2.0 litre turbo cars.

Jaguar XE's speedometer. PHOTO | COURTESY

 

LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR

That 5.1-second 0-100km/h quote looks conservative, I kid you not. The supercharged car takes off like it has been launched off a sling. The engine gains revs quite fast, meaning your right middle finger is always snicking away on the upshift as you pile on speed in a way you were not quite expecting and within no time you are breaking the law. Not that you can tell; the way this thing accelerates means you have to be looking at the road ALL the time, you can’t be squinting into the instrument cowl counting “sticks” trying to determine where 100km/h is (*see ‘Just so You Know’ 1).

Several seconds later: “How fast are we going?”

“I don’t know.”

We really don’t. What we know is we have blasted past two other press cars like they were going backwards and now some corners are looming in our view. This is going to be good. Brake hard to wash off excess speed, and the car slows down with enough force to make you strain against the seatbelts. The braking is linear as well, and again not too grabby. Confidence-inspiring, is what we like to call it. Incidentally, the first turn is a left hairpin, so despite this being a public road, one can aim for the apex; and one nails the apex perfectly. This sets up a chain of switchbacks and S-bends that really test the chassis balance and suspension setup, and can we just take a pause here for me to finally clarify that this, THIS is exactly why I got infatuated by the XE in the first place!

The car drives perfectly. The slight camber changes, reducing radius corners and blind crests do their damnedest to shrug us off their back, but the Jag will not let go. It just grips, and grips and grips.

Piling more speed into the turns brings the stability control into the picture, and again it is a masterpiece. To kill understeer, it simply brakes the inside wheels, making the car turn more sharply. To kill oversteer, there is torque vectoring. I posited that this car may be very similar to a Porsche 911 Turbo, in that one can set better lap* times (see ‘Just so You Know’ 2) with the stability program ON rather than OFF as most motoring outlets would have you believe.

The cherry on top is that all this is happening with no drama at all. Our ears are primed to pick up any hints of tyre squeal — which is the petrolhead’s early warning system to dial things down a little — but there is none. We instead pick up on something else: the supercharger on full song.

The noise reaching us is pornographic; I’m sorry, there is no better description. It is as exciting as it is titillating. It sounds like the patron saint of construction equipment is mating with a virgin goddess with the volume turned down a little. There is the guttural roar from the 3.0 V6, and then there is the distant wail of the supercharger as the revs build in anger. The first time we pick those sounds up we laugh like idiots, high-fiving each other before remembering that we are in a speeding Jag and we really ought to be paying attention to the road.

Given the simply staggering handling capabilities of the XE, we find ourselves going faster, braking later, turning harder and powering up earlier on corner exit. None of these antics will unsettle the car. The supercharger goddess can be made to sing in chorus with the engine: as the engine gets louder, the wail increases in pitch. It is a collaboration that one can easily get addicted to. We didn’t want it to end, but end it did.

That supercharged Jaguar XE. That is the one reason I want to write more columns. Bucket list entries updated...

*****

Just so you know...

  • I do not like the speedometer of the XE. Sure it looks good (ish ... there is a hint of ‘80s Japan about it), but the alternating font sizes and the distance of the figures from their respective markers can be a little confusing. Driving in an area (Cape Town) thick with speed detectors, both mobile and stationary, it serves you well to watch your speed. However, it is hard to tell which marker is for 100km/h, which one is for 90, which one is for 140, which one is for.... Like earlier stated, it pays to watch where you are going, but with the clock design of the XE, you might find yourself staring at the speedo longer than usual; “counting sticks” (markers) trying to tell which one denotes what speed. A little off-putting, but this can be circumvented by simply looking at the LED screen which has a digital speed readout on the bottom right below the fuel gauge, in which case the speedometer is pointless. Hmm... 

  • Last week I railed against Jaguar labeling this a “cosmopolitan” kind of thing. What they have built is a driver’s car, whether they like it or not. I asked one of the powers-that-be about track time in an XE and he said the XE is not a track car. Well, I think it can be: it has the right ingredients. Jaguar’s biggest bulls-eye has been placed on the back of Mercedes, and the XE goes unabashedly after the C Class. Anyone remember the W203? It was Merc’s first real stab at a proper “driver’s car”; and they advertised it as such (though the later version succeeded better in that). Where there is a C Class there is a BMW 3 Series. BMW’s tagline: “The Ultimate Driving Machine”, is best manifested in the 3. Cosmopolitan, they said. Who are you kidding, Jaguar? Call the XE what it is: the chariot to driving nirvana, and watch it sell. Also, create a Baraza JM Car Clinic Edition; remove the 8-speed auto, disable the traction control, get rid of the glass roof then equip it with a 5-speed manual gearbox and a proper handbrake; then sell it cheaply as an entry level enthusiast’s special. That would be the ultimate driver’s car. 

  • The start-stop feature is handy, whereby the engine cuts out at a traffic light and immediately restarts when the accelerator pedal is depressed. Question is: in cosmopolitan environments (exclusive city use), how long will the battery last that way?