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Jaguar’s third injection of new product in a single year will hit with the production F-Pace SUV set for an official Frankfurt motor show reveal.
The new XE compact sedan launching in Australia this week, as well as the forthcoming XF large sedan and F-Pace SUV, are built off the same modular architecture designed not to just save weight, but to beef up chassis dynamics.
The result? For the supercharged V6 XE S flagship, a double wishbone front suspension set-up with the same stiffness, camber and castor control as the F-Type coupe.
“We like to think of this car as close to a four-door F-Type as we can,” tells Jaguar Australia product planning manager Andrew Chapman.
For the 5.1sec 0-100km/h, 250kW and 450Nm XE S, he says, “we’re not focused on BMW 335i, we’re focused on [Audi] S4 and beyond.”
Jaguar isn’t shying away from stating who it wants to challenge with the F-Pace, either.
“There is only one target: Macan,” says Jaguar Australia public relations senior executive James Scrimshaw.
The F-Pace will share suspension with XE, which in turn claims to match F-Type, so the British brand is confident its swoopy, passenger car-based SUV can swoop in and take the class dynamics crown – as it also wants for XE and XF in their respective segments.
“[XE] is getting Jaguar back to where it should be and that’s being a driver’s car,” added Jaguar Australia managing director Matt Wiesner. “Not being driven, but all about the driving.”
Of total Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) sales in Australia, the cat-badged brand only claws onto a 10 per cent share of total volume. Wiesner wants to take that to 20 or 30 per cent by 2019/20. The 23 Jaguar dealers today will expand to 40 dealers by the end of next year, as the brand prepares for a fresh onslaught of those dynamically gifted new models.
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