Car for all seasons – Jag E-Pace
DIRT, TAR, FAST, SLOW: THIS SUV TAKES EVERYTHING IN ITS STRIDE
It feels like a cocoon on rough roads or smooth and drives like a vehicle smaller than it actually is.
Apparently US President Donald Trump is hugely concerned about the spread of bird flu throughout the world.
As usual, he will not just sit and watch the situation deteriorate. He is, after all, a man of action, with unfettered power at his fingertips. He has a plan.
Thus, the American armed forces will soon bomb Turkey, the Canary Islands and Aasvoelkop.
Bird lovers have described the plan as excessive. Especially the good people living around Aasvoelkop, who said it was plain “Överkill”.
Which description could well pertain to using a Jaguar E-Pace to get around on a rally.
Not, understand, a polite Sunday afternoon get-together with exotic cars parked on smooth expanses of lawn. A proper, serious rally, with demented crews blasting fast cars over farm roads at improbable speeds.
We are talking about round three of the 2018 South African Rally Championship around Hammanskraal, that this writer and top motorsport photographer Dave Ledbitter went to cover.
Since The Citizen Motoring’s garage happened to contain a Jaguar E-Pace D240 HSE at the time, it seemed natural to use the SUV to get around on the dirt.
Of course, very few Jaguar E-Pace owners would actually get their cars dirty and we were nervous about venturing beyond Sandton’s best tar roads in the R810 100 vehicle.
Look at the pictures – would you take that exotic piece of sculpture donga hopping and risk scratching the paint?
You would not. It is, viewed from any angle, a thing of beauty.
What we liked most were things like the distinctive Jaguar grille and lights, short body overhangs and powerful haunches. We also liked the 21-inch alloy spoked wheels, though the wide, low-profile tyres on the test car did not look like a great idea for usage over rutted farm roads.
Other things made a lot of sense – like the 2.4-litre four-cylinder, twin-turbocharged diesel engine, which produces 177kW of power at 4 000rpm and a huge 500Nm of torque from just 1 500rpm.
The grunt and twist goes to the front wheels via a nine-speed automatic transmission, which instantaneously diverts power to the rear axle when it detects slippery surfaces.
All of the above operate so smoothly that it is almost impossible to detect gearshifts, up or down, while on the move.
Equally, on dirt surfaces, this driver could never figure whether we were travelling courtesy of front-wheel or all-wheel drive.
Cocooned in the ultra-comfortable interior, occupants are well shielded from outside interference like road vibrations and wind noise. Almost too well.
It is easy to drive on the road at 120km/h, glance at the surrounding countryside for a few moments, look down again and find yourself travelling at 160km/h – the two velocities feel the same.
Luckily, there is an easy-to-operate cruise control system to stop that from happening.
There are also things like sculpted seats, huge rear legroom, a luggage capacity of 577 litres, four 12-volt charging points, five USB and a 4G Wi-Fi hotspot for up to eight devices.
Our E-Pace featured the latest generation of Jaguar’s Touch Pro infotainment system, plus everything else that can click, bang, flash, keep occupants safe or call Oprah direct.
According to them, natural voice control technology, a 10inch touchscreen interface and a customisable homescreen make interactions with the system quick, simple and highly intuitive.
Being old, computer-mystified and feeble, this writer stopped fiddling once I knew how to find 947 on the radio, but I will take Jaguar’s word for all of the above.
I will also believe everything they claim about the vehicle’s chassis hardware and computer-enabled suspension systems.
According to Jaguar’s information book, it works thus: Data from the vehicle sensors enables software to analyse the driving conditions and calculate the optimum torque distribution, updating every 10 milliseconds.
When the E-Pace corners, the computer analyses the yaw rate, throttle position, steering angle and lateral acceleration.
The control unit will then pre-emptively distribute more torque to the outside wheels when turning, based on lateral acceleration and steering angle.
We do not understand all of that, but can vouch for the fact that it DOES work.
We took to one of the rally’s special stages at one point and found that, due to a timing miscalculation, we ran the risk of sharing the road with hard-charging rally cars. There was no option than to proceed at speed along a winding dirt road through a sunflower field, with absolutely no place to pull off in safety. Heart in mouth, we proceeded to drive faster than caution dictated, with eyes on stalks trying to find, and miss, road irregularities. The E-Pace took it in its stride. The steering was sharp and absolutely accurate, the suspension soaked up bumps with aplomb, body lean was minimal and the vehicle felt much smaller than its actual size while being positioned on corner apexes.
It felt so good that we were disappointed when we finally found a place to stop.
Of course, this kind of behaviour will not be practiced by your average E-Pace buyer, but it would be good to know they could, if they really wanted to.
Fuel efficiency was also impressive – we managed an overall consumption figure of 8,2 l/100km, while not trying to conserve juice at any point.
Being a poor motoring scribe, this writer could never conceive of paying close to R1 million for a vehicle, but ANC government bureaucrats and other obscenely rich people will probably think the E-Pace represents good value for money.
We were just grateful to play with it for a while and return it without any scratches.