Jaguar’s new SUV for 2016 to be badged F-Pace

The launch of the Jaguar F-Pace in 2016 will mark the first entry of the 80-year-old manufacturer in the SUV market.

The F-Pace name is understood to have been chosen to emphasise both its relationship in style and character with the F-type sports car and to recall Jaguar’s famous 'Grace, Pace, Space' slogan of the 1950s and 1960s

The new SUV squarely targets Porsche’s Macan and BMW’s X4 models.

The new car, nearly identical in size and looks to the C-X17 concept revealed at the Frankfurt motor show in 2013, is expected to become one of Jaguar’s two best-selling models, performing strongly in major markets such as China and the US and rivalling the volume of the forthcoming XE compact saloon.

Once established in the market, the two debutantes should push total Jaguar volume beyond 200,000 units a year, up from last year’s figure of about 80,000.

JLR’s global operations director, Andy Goss, says the emergence of the F-Pace is a direct result of the company’s plan to spend more than £3.5 billion (Rs 33,000 crore)a year on product development over the next few years.

The F-Pace’s styling was created in-house by design boss Ian Callum and his team at the beginning of 2013. It is a relatively long car for its compact billing, nearly 40cm longer than a Range Rover Evoque and about the same height.

These generous dimensions allow the car its curvaceous exterior (“If you want form,” says Callum, “you need space”), which includes muscular haunches, classic Jaguar bonnet lines and strongly raked front and rear windscreens.

Callum admits it took time to shape a convincing SUV in the image of the F-type. “This was our first crossover design,” he says, “and, yes, it was hard. We found the initial results quite difficult and disappointing. The profile, the 200-metre view, was the hardest bit, and that’s what sells cars. But I reckon we cracked it in the end.”

Jaguar isn’t yet saying what engines the car will use, but the range seems certain to start with models powered by the soon-to-land Ingenium four-cylinder line-up and is likely to include engines up to the 3.0-litre supercharged petrol V6 used in the F-type, with power potential beyond 250bhp.

The F-Pace will be built in Jaguar’s new Solihull plant and should be on dealers’ forecourts early in 2016.

“We’ve been talking about a product onslaught for a quite while,” says Goss, “and now it’s beginning.”

The F-Pace will come to Indian showrooms, sometime towards the end of 2016. Given the popularity of SUVs in the Indian market, the F-Pace is likely to be one of the key volume drivers of Jaguar sales on the sub-continent.

The prospects of good volumes will make locally assembly feasible and allow Jaguar to price the F-Pace competitively in India.

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