Jaguar's first SUV tested

You’d have to travel to the surface of the moon, or the bottom of the ocean, to find an environment as hostile as northern Sweden in January.

When we visit the air temperature is a bracing minus 29 Celcius -- cold enough to freeze the moisture out of the air or, as you discover within seconds, the wetness inside your nose.

At this time of year the sun barely rises above the horizon, skimming the tree line of the seemingly never-ending forest hereabouts for the five hours that separates dawn and dusk. The whiteness of this snow-covered world makes your eyes ache after a few minutes, and the ground is cold enough to freeze toes through skiing boots.

We’re 950km from Stockholm and just 60km from the Arctic Circle, but the biggest shock comes when I translate the prices at the hotel bar last night. A much-needed beer here costs the equivalent of $20.

Jaguar has, pretty much, brought us to the end of the world to provide a first taste of the F-PACE, the company’s first SUV and therefore the car that fills a hole in the model plan that’s been obvious since BMW introduced the first X5.

As premium crossover sales have boomed so Jaguar’s stance against them has weakened, and then turned into outright capitulation; a point reinforced by the fact Land Rover now outsells its sister brand by more than four-to-one.

But can the F-PACE, which was revealed at the Frankfurt motor show last September and due on sale in Australia by Auugust, possibly be good enough to justify being this late to the party?

To my surprise, it’s the Jag engineers who have come to Sweden to introduce the new model who drop the 'M' word before I can artfully work it into the conversation.

“The Macan made us pause the whole project for several months” admits James Matthews, the F-PACE’s lead dynamics engineer.

Work on the F-PACE was well advanced before Porsche’s baby SUV broke cover, but when it did it brought the realisation that it was good enough to effectively reset the segment’s benchmarks.

Before that the F-PACE was being matched against the BMW X3, but the Macan immediately became target one, with the F-PACE getting firmer suspension and more aggressive powertrain settings to help it compete.

Being based on the same mostly aluminium platform as the recently launched XF and XE sedans gives it an excellent start in life. Although Jaguar is keen to stress that 81 per cent of the F-PACE is new, the company admits that, from B-pillar forward, its body in white is very similar to that of the XF, although the ‘Pace gets a new subframe for its longer-stroked suspension.

Powerplant options are all familiar from elsewhere in the JLR clan. In Sweden we’ve got the top-spec supercharged 283kW 3.0-litre V6 petrol and 224kW 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 diesels to experience; the full range will include smaller four-pot petrols and diesels.

Some markets will get rear-wheel drive versions and even the choice of a manual transmission, although we’re confident that every F-PACE coming to Oz will be an all-paw fitted with Jaguar’s familiar eight-speed autobox. All F-PACEs will ride on steel springs, with the option of switchable dampers reserved for top-spec versions.

Although still wearing prototype disguise, we’re promised that the F-PACEs we drive are representative of how the finished ones will perform.

Fondness for my toes and a desire to keep them means I don’t spend too long standing outside and admiring the external design, but it’s clear that the F-PACE is more of a pumped-up and stanced wagon than it is an XL SUV.

Jag’s design boss Ian Callum has overseen the styling of more sports cars than almost anybody else, from the Aston DB7 onwards, and – size and shape aside – the F-PACE is certainly curvaceous enough to qualify as another. He’s big on big wheels too, with production versions set to wear up to 22-inch rims; even the winter-tyre shod prototypes in Sweden are on 20s.

Apart from the raised seating position the cabin feels very similar to that of the XF sedan, with switchgear and general design shared between the two cars.

The centre console houses the familiar shame of Jaguar’s pop-up rotary gear selector; the company is determined to persist until we love it, and the dashboard has a vast 12.3-inch touch-screen for the optional InControl Touch Pro media pack. Opting for this will also bring TFT instruments in place of those old-fashioned moving needles.

It’s roomy up front, impressively spacious for rear-seat passengers and gets a Macan-humbling 950 litres of boot capacity.

It doesn’t take long to realise, with our driving limited to dancing on ice, that several major dynamic questions aren’t going to be answered here.

The combination of slippery surfaces and winter tyres means pretty much zero steering feel. Most driving takes place on the surface of a frozen lake, 50cm of ice sitting on top of 10 metres of water and what I reckon are probably some very grumpy fish, and although the ice is surprisingly rough in places, it’s not up to telling us much about how the F-PACE rides.

As for brakes I can’t confirm much beyond the fact that there are some, given anything beyond the most gentle pressure on the pedal produced the juddering of a full ABS deployment.

Excuses made, there’s plenty of stuff that we can talk about. For a start that the F-PACE’s rear-biased powertrain gives it a handling balance that’s friendly enough to try a career in door-to-door selling.

We get to drive a supercharged V6 version on a 100-metre-diameter circle that’s been carved into the surface of the frozen lake, and which includes a super-slick inner ice ring surrounded by fractionally grippier snow. It’s meant to be a demonstration of how clever the F-PACE’s various driver aids are, and a chance to progressively disable them.

It doesn’t take long to degenerate into a full-on hoonathon, with the stability-off F-PACE easily persuaded into lurid full-throttle drifts, holding impressive angles for seemingly indefinite periods as the clever four-wheel drive system tolerates the sort of abuse that should have the car pirouetting like an ice skater.

As with AWD versions of Jaguar’s other cars, the F-PACE is fundamentally rear-driven, with up to 90 per cent of torque heading rearwards most of the time. Once slip is detected a central coupling progressively diverts this forward to help pull the car straight.

The diffs at both ends are open, with traction control working to redistribute torque laterally through the brakes to keep everything moving. (Or, in the case of the ice circle, giving up and letting all four wheels spin.)

It’s huge fun, but I actually learn more about the F-PACE when experiencing the other end of its dynamic range in ‘Winter’ mode. This demonstrates Jaguar’s Active Surface Response system, which ‘reads’ low-grip surfaces by taking inputs from various sensors to work out approximate adhesion levels and adjust things accordingly.

This means none of the sensation of rear-end slip delivered by the more aggressive dynamic modes; even in ‘Normal’ the F-PACE slides its tail on ice, but not before the system minimises understeer and maximises grip, working with impressively slight evidence of its near-permanent intervention.

Jaguar has carved out a special dynamic track on the lake surface in the shape of the company’s corporate leaper logo and it’s an ego blow to realise that I’m almost certainly faster with the car tip toeing around in Winter mode than drifting around with every aid switched off.

The V6 petrol engine feels good, despite the lack of enough traction to do it justice, with linear responses and a nice soundtrack when used hard. The V6 diesel has more torque – a stonking 700 Nm – but it’s harder to modulate and sounds far more industrial than its melodic petrol sister.

The eight-speed auto worked well in each, with intelligent changes and the ability to deliver instructions through the behind-wheel paddles; the car even tolerated manually swapping between speeds while drifting.

We can’t tell you how the F-PACE will cope with a non-frozen world, but there are lots of reasons to feel confident after this first spin: it’s handsome, well-finished, fast and with a rear-biased handling balance that, even on bone-dry tarmac, should stay fun.

It’s also bigger and more sensible than the Porsche Macan; indeed its dimensions are most of the way to those of the bigger Cayenne. It’s been a very long wait, but Jaguar’s first SUV looks to be worth it.