New Jaguar E-Pace ride review ~ station of gear

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4 Oct, 2017 (All day) John McIlroy

We get taken for a drive in the all-new Jaguar E-Pace SUV to see how the Audi Q3 rival is shaping up

Jaguar is enjoying record sales with its F-Pace SUV – and now the company is turning its attention to the likes of the BMW X1 and Audi Q3 with the smaller E-Pace. To find out what buyers can expect, Auto Express joined chief dynamics tester Mike Cross for a passenger run over the roads where the new car has been developed.

The E-Pace is significant for Jaguar on more than just its potential sales figures, because it’s the first model from the company since the X-Type to be based on a front-wheel-drive chassis. The underpinnings are similar to those used on the Range Rover Evoque, in fact – although Jaguar’s engineering team has worked hard to give the car a distinct character.

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“We wanted the E-Pace to be as close in spirit to an XE as possible,” Cross says, as he begins to demonstrate what the car can do over some increasingly damp Welsh back roads. “So whereas the front subframe on the Evoque is independent, its back edge is fixed on the E-Pace. This gives just a bit more front-end bite on turn-in.”

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You can sit surprisingly low in the cabin of the E-Pace, and if you do, the relatively short, stubby nose afforded by the transverse engine layout means that visibility is excellent. There’s decent shoulder and headroom for grown-ups, and a quick fumble around the dash and centre console reveals generous storage space, including a couple of easily accessible USB ports between the front seats.

Our car in Wales has the top-spec Ingenium four-cylinder petrol engine, a 296bhp/400Nm unit that’s been seen most recently in the F-Type sports car. Its character is very different in the baby SUV, though, with no pops or bangs from the exhaust, and at cruising speeds what noise it makes is drowned out by a whoosh around the chunky side mirrors. That’s not to say the E-Pace is slow, though; the claimed 0-62mph time of 5.9 seconds feels realistic.

It’s not long before Cross is able to use twisty, off-camber stretches of mid-Wales road to show how the nose of the E-Pace is more responsive than, say, an Evoque’s. Cross’s only real frustration is that the development car he’s driving lacks the optional steering wheel paddles; using the stubby gearlever to flick the nine-speed auto between ratios is more of a distraction on the most tortuous bits of the route.

Yet the car seems happy to flick between direction changes – unusually so for a small SUV. There’s not much body roll to speak of and yet, even on our car’s 20-inch wheels, the ride feels on the acceptable side of firm, even when trundling slowly through villages.

Even from the other seat the E-Pace feels like it has the potential to be one of the best driver’s cars in its class. It was always going to be crucial for the engineers to deliver a small SUV that still had typical Jaguar handling ability – and on the evidence of this brief ride, it looks like they’re on track to do so.

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