The Jaguar F Pace looks really good and is fun to drive

On the morning of August 31 — a week ago to the day — I took flight KQ 760 which was supposed to leave Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for South Africa at 7.35 am but left half an hour late.

Worse still, it did a U-turn somewhere in the skies over Tanzania and returned to base an hour after it took off, ostensibly due to “mechanical difficulties”.

I was furious because I had been invited to the shortest international trip of my career yet, and the invite contained words and expressions like “SVR”, “Jaguar”, “supercharged” and “racetrack”.

In fact, the trip was so short that the itinerary said I’d be heading from the airport straight to the racetrack to initiate proceedings that involved the said terms.

When one’s flight is delayed by two hours, by extension that means two hours fewer spent at the racetrack. And what a racetrack it is.

KYALAMI GRAND PRIX CIRCUIT

This is South Africa’s best known racetrack, which has hosted a large number of international events, including Formula One some decades back. It is also where Top Gear Live sometimes takes place.

Located at sea level, 3.2km long and with few, if any, elevation changes, Kyalami is a racing complex that was on the brink of a takeover by private developers with capitalist intentions along the lines of housing projects but Porsche AG stepped up at the last minute and snatched it as their own and did some renovations.

The result is beautiful. So it was with some excitement that I was greeted by the roar of scores of cylinders and a few thousand horsepower as the race versions of a Porsche 911 GT2 diced with a BMW M6 Gran Coupe and Mercedes-Benz AMG GT, with maybe a Mini thrown in the mix.

There was also a Lamborghini Huracan and an Audi R8. There were also Ford Mustangs, some Nissan GTRs and various other cars from the German powerhouses of Mercedes-AMG, BMW M Division and Audi’s RennSport. So much power, so much noise, so much speed.

I knew I was in the right place. And why was I there? There is this little event called the South Africa Festival of Motoring...

SOUTH AFRICA FESTIVAL OF MOTORING

Think of this as the true enthusiast’s replacement for the Johannesburg International Motor Show (JIMS – and no relation to the fictional Jim that people address in e-mails written to DN2 under the tagline Car Clinic).

While JIMS was seen as a stuffy, overly formal motor show for people obsessed with numbers and product positioning, FoM is more informal and targeted more at real lovers of motoring, hence its location at a newly refurbished racetrack.

This is the first ever FoM. JIMS is dead, so expect to see more of FoM. As is typical with first-time events, teething problems abound and there is the nervous concern about the feasibility of future events, but perhaps the organisers shouldn’t worry so much because I think they are onto something good here.

THE REAL REASON I WENT TO SOUTH AFRICA

So, you thought that the Range Rover Evoque was polarising? Some of you might have called it a “girly” car. Well, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) proved all you chauvinistic critics out there wrong by unveiling a proper girly Range Rover in the middle of the racing complex: an Evoque with the roof lopped off. The car looks like it was driven off the set of Glee by one of its acerbic lead actresses all decked out in bejewelled tights, bangs and a pink iPhone. It is hard to stress just how girly that convertible is and I’ll be honest: I don’t much care for it. Sure, it’s pretty, it’s just that I don’t want one.

I found its real purpose  hard to pinpoint. That is probably why the PR blurb steered clear of that topic and focused more on the F Type SVR (550hp supercharged V8 engine) than on the baby Rover with a thatched roof.

Less pretty are the gaping holes and panel gaps around the fabric convertible roof mechanism when it has been folded away. The company that basically invented the topless Jeep almost 70 years ago made a convertible Range Rover Evoque! Who, exactly, is this car for and how many units does it expect to sell between now and December?

Now that Land Rover Range Rover decided to not only break tradition with the kerb-crawling, mall attack Evoque but shatter it completely with a spyder version of the said Evoque, what should we expect next? Are Jaguar going also break tradition and build an SUV?

Well, actually yes. They have. But unlike the Range Rover that I believe is not one of JLR’s finest moments, the Jaguar utility is a proper, honest-to-goodness broadside hit. Jaguar scored, and it scored properly.

It’s called the F Pace, and driving it (however briefly) was the primary reason I flew to South Africa.

Driving it was as revealing as it was fun, and in a strange twist to the natural order of things, I came out of the experience preferring the turbocharged diesel iteration of the car to one of the more obvious option: the supercharged petrol car. Yes, you read that right.

To understand it well, let us quickly take it through a quick standardised Motoring Press Agency Test:

1. WHAT IS IT?

It is called the Jaguar F Pace. It looks like a long roof version of the XE with a few extra inches in height and bodywork. It can be viewed as Jaguar taking the smart road and harvesting the potential in the highly profitable crossover utility segment as invented by the Toyota RAV4 22 years ago.

This car is important because, a) it should sell, given what it is; and b) it really needs to sell because if it does, then Jaguar will finally have a pot of money to play with and typically when they have this pot, we tend to see very interesting things coming out of Coventry.

It is hewn out of JLR’s modular aluminium framework, a fact that lends further mileage to my suspicion that it might, in fact, be an XE Longroof. The use of aluminium and steel in the chassis and panels creates perfect 50:50 weight distribution, which is ideal when driving dynamics come into the equation.

2. EXTERIOR

I just said it looks like a longroof XE. What more do I need to explain? The car is pretty. Not pretty-dainty like an Evoque convertible, but pretty-beautiful like something you gaze at the first time and can’t stop staring at for a long time afterwards.

The size is hard to discern in the photos; I was expecting something Cayenne-sized but it turns out the vehicle is a lot more compact than that. It is just about the size of a Toyota RAV4. And it really is a looker.

3. INTERIOR

Typical new-age Jaguar with circular gear knob, big touchscreen infotainment set-up, circular steering boss embossed with a chrome Jaguar logo and thick, easy-to-grip rim bent into a smallish circle that begs for some back-road, open-throttle antics. More on this later.

The interior is just like the one in Jaguar’s saloons, the difference with the XE being that this time they paid closer attention to the use of materials. It is extremely difficult to criticise this interior, but it does have a notable flaw.

The window switches are on the inside sill of the door frame, as opposed to having the electrical panel mounted on the door handle itself (or somewhere nearby).

While this is not specifically an F Pace quirk — it actually applies across almost the entire range  of Land Rover products — it might still become a considerable cross to bear after a while. This is how:

JLR products are bought by adventurous (and well-off) types who might, against their better judgment, possibly wind up in some kind of wet environment. It could be a puddle they are splashing through or driving in heavy rain, or maybe even at a car wash.

Water does tend to collect along the frames/edges of doors, so when you crack open that window, guess what the water will drip onto? Yes, you are right: the electrical panel that houses the mirror and window controls. Water plus electricity equals something not so good.

So when you combine that design flaw with the possibility of a wet environment and a probable need to crack open the window, you can see where this is going.

Might I add that using those controls is not as intuitive as it might appear at first?

4. ENGINES

Now we come to the interesting part. During the pre-drive briefing, we were given iPads to edify ourselves on some details on the F Pace, and I distinctly recall there being something about not getting an F Pace diesel in our markets for the moment.

So it came as a bit of a surprise that the first car I got into was a diesel-powered F Pace, the 3.0 litre twin turbo.

Let’s just say a car of that size with an engine of that capacity burning fuel of that type has no business developing more torque than a Landcruiser VX, but somehow it does. What you get when you start spooling up those turbos is 700Nm, a clean 50Nm more than the 4.5 litre diesel twin-turbo V8 engine in the 200 Series Landcruiser. That will have a huge role to play in later developments.

There is also the option of a 2.0 litre diesel turbo, which I drove next, and which might objectively have its own merits but subjectively was a bit of a downer. Blame the fact that I started the day off with the more powerful vehicle before slinging myself into the breadline version.

Then there is the 3.0 litre supercharged petrol engine. Engage the vehicle dynamics control system into Race mode and blip the throttle. Listen to the crackle and pop of the exhaust on the overrun.

Watch the dials glow red in response to the Dynamic setting of the car’s computers. Grin stupidly. Snick the rotary selector into D (or S) and stomp the throttle. A lot of things then start happening….

To be continued next week.