Jaguar has made plenty of mistakes in the past ten years; the F-Pace was not one of them. Sure, it might’ve initially bent a few noses out of shape with its conspicuous SUVness (most of those noses belonging to people who thought that Jaguar should exclusively build saloons) but it was absolutely of its time and sold like it. The firm reckons it has built 328,000 of them since the model launched in 2016; a fairly modest number by some rival (German) measures, but a veritable home run for Jaguar. And a deserved one, too: the F-Pace was well-proportioned and good to drive. Very good, if you went for the SVR.
Mindful of this fact - and obviously conscious of the need to keep the car front of mind as its all-electric future approaches the present - Jaguar has launched something called the F-Pace 90th Anniversary Edition. Why 90 years? Well, that refers to the manufacturer’s ‘nine decades of innovation and internal combustion engine production’ and does rather rubber stamp the idea that this will be among the last fossil-fuelled cars that Jaguar sells. That makes it less of a special edition and more a way of marking out the last portion of the production run for anyone opting for an S, SE or HSE spec car. Expect ‘subtle badging, with R-Dynamic exterior cues' and options including diamond-turned alloy wheels, privacy glass, a panoramic roof and with sports seats inside. Short of the V8, there’s a wide range of engines, too.
Justifiably worried that this light cosmetic dusting might seem too threadbare for an entire press release, Jaguar has also reminded us that it now builds and sells something called an SVR 575 Edition. Which is much more like it. In point of fact, it claims to launched this model late last year - but it must’ve done so by whispering it into a broken telephone because we’d not heard of it. Still, no matter: as the name suggests, the 575 finally gifts the F-Pace the 5.0-litre V8’s chunkier output, meaning a 25hp improvement over the non-Edition model. This is mostly for bragging rights, of course - the 0-60mph time drops to 3.8 seconds - but when Jaguar says the supercharged unit is a ‘celebration of internal combustion’, you certainly won’t hear any argument from us.
Elsewhere the Edition gets the usual SVR bodywork (including rear diffuser and active exhaust) alongside ’22-inch forged alloy wheels with Diamond Turned finish and Satin Technical Grey contrast’. Inside, you get Suedecloth and Windsor leather performance seats. So not the wettest or wildest special edition either - yet it hardly needs to be. The F-Pace SVR was already the best car Jaguar made; no reason to think that slightly more power would sour that. Either way, both trim levels are available to order now. We still don’t know exactly how long the car will continue to be build (expect to learn more about that the closer we get to Jaguar’s EV transition) but probably best not to hang around if you’ve always fancied one.
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