Jaguar Makes a Mountain Lion

It’s an interesting feeling to turn heads. When you’re ambling about town and everyone gives you a discreet once-over (or, in the case of young men, a full-on, unashamed stare), you do feel quite special. It doesn’t happen to me that often, given the fact that I look less like a six-packed celebrity/ model/ internet sensation, and more like a cut-rate Charles Njonjo, with my penchant for three-piece suits. But I did get to turn heads the other day when I managed to get my hands on the new Jaguar F-Pace, and took it for a spin down the highway.

Getting ahold of the car, by the way, was ridiculously easy. I had been invited to the launch of the F-Pace a few weeks ago at RMA Motors in Westlands, and my return e-mail was a speculative query as to whether I could take it on a test drive. The enthusiasm with which Elizabeth agreed to my request almost made me suspicious, but here I was, on a chilly Tuesday morning, with a traffic-clogged Mombasa Road ahead of me.

The F-Pace is Jaguar’s newest model, and takes the marque to a place it’s never been before. It’s, ironically, the place where it should have started, since the jaguar, after all, is a mountain lion. The F-Pace is an SUV, or, in the Jaguar Land Rover argot, an All Purpose Sports Vehicle, or APSV. Jaguar is the latest luxury motor manufacturer to jump into the SUV game. In the last decade and a half or so, most of the attention, buyers and profit have been in this segment, and almost every manufacturer who takes themselves seriously has either launched, or is about to launch, a behemoth. Even marques renowned for their luxury or sporting pretensions, such as Rolls Royce and Bentley, are readying showrooms for their take on what we used to call four by fours.

The launch of the F-Pace in Nairobi was only a few weeks ago (ahead, incidentally, of the car’s Indian home market – yes, Jaguar is an iconic British brand, but the Indian Tata family supplies the money). It is a compact SUV, meaning that while it sits physically higher than its stablemates, it is still only strictly a five-seater (and whoever gets the middle seat at the back had better be a pretty compact fellow, by the way). Sitting in the electrically-adjustable driver’s seat, one does feel noticeably higher than drivers of saloon cars, which does help with visibility. This is especially useful when contending with traffic, and when you do get impatient and wanting to cast your eye ahead to see whether the interminable Nairobi traffic in front of you is moving.

The car does have one feature that is useful for that traffic. Stop-start technology switches off the engine when you’re stationary for more than a few seconds. Yes, you can switch it off yourself, I hear you say, but in this case, it will keep the car’s entertainment system, as well as air conditioning, running. Also, it only takes a dab of the accelerator to get the engine on and the car moving again. It will save on fuel, especially if you are stationary for a long while.

When you get moving, however, prepare to gulp down all the fuel you have saved. Because while the F-Pace has offroad pretensions, it refuses to lose its sports car origins.  This is, after all, a car that pays obvious homage to its two-seater sports car sibling, the F-Type (at some point in my video review, I even mistakenly transposed the names). If you put your foot down, there is an ominous V6 howl that emanates from the exhaust, and the whole vehicle turns lithe and propels itself towards the horizon with undue haste. If you want to pretend to be telling the car what to do, you can flick-flick the paddle shifters behind the steering wheel to quickly go up and down the eight-speed ZF gearbox. There’s almost no wrong gear in the car, and if you dare, you can switch the car into sport mode (from dynamic). This makes the gear changes blindingly quick, and the car will accelerate at a pace that will make your eyes water. You will obviously make a tycoon in Turkana very happy, given how fast you will be depleting your fuel tank, but if the stonking acceleration doesn’t bring a grin to your face, your motorhead credentials are suspect. If you’re not careful, though, you will quickly attract the attention of the NTSA, given how easily you’ll breach the speed limit.

The thing is to then stick within the speed limits and appreciate the car. The particular model I was in, the R Sport, was burgundy in colour (or ‘Odyssey Red’, as the marketing people would like you to call it), with red and black leather seats and interior. The seats are true sports items, adjustable every which way and properly gripping. It had a full-length sunroof, and an entertainment system that effortlessly connected with my phone through Bluetooth. I was able to play music from my iPhone through the car’s audio system, and you can navigate your playlist from the display unit. It was thus a disappointment, then, that the entertainment system is such a letdown. JLR have never gotten the infotainment system right in their vehicles. The screen looks like it is two generations old, given how blurry (and occasionally unresponsive) it is. It also, oddly, recognised my phone-book only up to the letter ‘M’, meaning that when I was trying to call Zeynab Wandati, I had to look down. She also complained of the audio quality of the phone call, to the point where I had to pull over to complete the call on the handset. If you’re an audiophile, as well, the Meridian stereo may not be to your liking. If you’re fond of old hip-hop tracks, the system’s bass is far too weak, and Tupac may rise from his grave to smack you for making his music sound so bad.

Those are the only major quibbles, however, because the car is a revelation. When George and I tried to make our way back to town, we decided that Mombasa Road traffic was too much, and took the Northern Bypass, onto Thika Road, on our way back to Westlands. That was when the car truly revealed itself. We had put away the camera equipment, and were simply chatting about cars, luxury and life. The road was a mix of slow moving traffic and the open road on the ‘superhighway’. That’s when I discovered the genius of the F-Pace. If you ignore the sheer hooliganism of sport mode (except when you need to take an overtaking gap) and simply trundle along, you’ll realise that the suppleness of the ride, the tightness of the controls, and the driving position all come together to make a very impressive tourer. You’ll want to live some distance from town, if only to make your commute longer so that you can spend your time in such a comfortable location. Even the sport suspension seems a lot more forgiving if you’re not thrashing the car, and you’ll realise that this can be your daily driver.

So is this a car worth buying? The R Sport costs just north of 13 million shillings (though the entry level diesel costs around 9 million). For that, you will get a sports car on sturdy stilts. It can be a wolf, or can don sheep’s clothing (to be more accurate, it can be a Jaguar in an eco-warrior’s suit). What’s certain is that, regardless of whether you’re a cheaper version of Charles Njonjo, you will be sure to turn heads.

Also published in the Business Daily on July 15 2016, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Jaguar-SUV-that-speaks-style--comfort-and-power/-/1248928/3294556/-/item/0/-/ijq87kz/-/index.html