Hard ride is sadly off the Pace

Stiff springs kill Jag’s trademark grace

IT’S 1966 and a four-year-old Colin Goodwin is walking with his mother.

A Jaguar E-Type drives past, a model born only five years ago itself, and the small boy chirps up: “Mummy, I’m going to have one of those when I grow up.”

Sadly, the values of all classic cars, and E-Types in particular, have gone through the roof so I’m about as near to owning one now as I was when I was four. One day perhaps... if I’m not too old to drive the thing.

The love of Jaguars has never gone. I’ve owned a couple of scrappy XJ-Ss and, of course, driven dozens for work.

The company might now be Indian-owned (by Tata), but for me Jaguar has always been thoroughly British.

So, it pains me deeply to say that one of the most disappointing cars I’ve driven this year is indeed a Jaguar. I am realistic enough to understand they need to make money which, these days, means building an SUV.

Porsche, for example, sells more 4x4s than it does sports cars because that’s where the big profits are and Jaguar’s F-Pace, launched last year, pushed sales up 83%. It’s a car that’s going to put Jag’s accounts into the black.

This latest SUV is the E-Pace, a size down from the F-Pace. It’s shorter but retains a lot of that car’s styling cues. It’s based on the Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque’s platform which means that it has a steel body rather than the F-Pace’s