Jaguar F-Pace SVR Fast Fleet test – living with a supercharged V8 Brit

Two Jags? Makes you think of a politician, if you’re of a certain age, but it’s true: evo really did run two Jaguars on the Fast Fleet simultaneously prior to the infamous rebrand. Let me introduce you to the second of those, an F-Pace SVR in Ultra Blue Metallic.

The irony of such a situation isn’t lost on us, given Jaguars have been largely absent from evo’s pages for quite a few years. There are a number of reasons, obvious and less so, for that, but what I’m realising – as I believe my learned colleague Mr Meaden also found with his F-type – is that a good Jaguar is something to be cherished, and the fact it has committed wholeheartedly to electrification is a great pity.

> The origins of the Jaguar F-type with the men that made it happen

This is not what I thought I’d think about the F-Pace. I am not, I must say, an ‘SUV person’. Or more to the point, not a great one for performance SUVs. If there was a saloon or, even better, an estate version of the SVR package then I wouldn’t choose the SUV even one time out of a hundred. But there isn’t – at least not any more, the days of XFRs and XFR-Ss long gone. So the F-Pace it was, and I happened to think it was really quite wonderful. But before we get into that, here are some details on the car.

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Unlike our F-type, this 21-plate F-Pace equated to running a used car, which is highly unusual with a manufacturer-supplied long-termer. But like many firms, Jaguar had been hit hard with supply-chain issues, and new stock that was available had being channelled towards satisfying customer demand. Nevertheless, Jaguar wanted us to run an F-Pace and had ‘GJX’, which had already seen service on the company’s fleet to the tune of over 20,000 miles. So rather than being defleeted it found a new home with evo.

The SVR’s basic retail price showed as £77,595 on the road, but ours listed at £81,565 when new thanks to £415 of privacy glass, a £1275 fixed panoramic glass roof, the £420 Meridian surround sound system and £1300 for ‘Pixel’ LED headlights. A lockable cooled glovebox was a further £60 (why not just make it standard?), an air quality sensor £60 (ditto), cabin air ionisation and filters £140, and a wireless phone charging tray £300. 

In true evo tradition the big blue Jag and I hit the ground running – nearly 1500 miles in the first week to be exact. Many of those were heading to the Ring and back with photographer Aston Parrott, and if the SVR had already made a fine first impression then it really proved its mettle on this trip, neatly encapsulating what makes this car so appealing. In Comfort mode it is exactly that: a car with that smooth, effortless, entirely predictable steering response, beautifully judged throttle actuation and relaxed ride that mark out the best Jags. It swallows long distances whole, and there’s always that cultured, woofling V8 backbeat. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the AJ-series V8s, but the integration here is so good and it has so much sheer grunt at all times, effortlessly accelerating into gaps or gaining speed on a motorway. Perhaps because big V8s are largely a thing of the past now it stands out even more, but it’s worth the purchase price alone.

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Then you can switch to Dynamic when the road turns twisty and you really feel and hear the full 542bhp. True, the SVR might not ultimately be quite as athletic as a Macan Turbo, but honestly, with two simple driver modes and such a broad bandwidth of ability it’s perfectly judged. And unlike the obvious German rivals, it’s warm and cosseting on the inside and somehow less…um, obnoxious on the outside. So good was it that I wondered whether I was going to be able to prise the key out of Aston’s hand at the end of our road trip…

Fuel consumption? Well, when it arrived someone had clearly been having fun as the trip was showing 20.5mpg. I have to say I gulped pretty hard at that point, what with the outrageous fuel prices, but with a genuine mix of real-world driving it settled on 25-26mpg and on the long cruise across Europe it was managing 30mpg. Not amazing, but far from tragic for an SUV with a supercharged V8.