TEST Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio versus Jaguar F-Pace SVR
62 SEPTEMBER 2019 leisurewheels.co.za
JAGUAR F-PACE SVR
Jaguar is an illustrious British brand.
Posh cabins, often with half a tree
attached to the dashboard and only
the most learned cows donating their
hide for the seats. And under a long
bonnet adorned with a leaping big
cat, a powerful engine. That leaping
big cat, by the way, represented grace,
elegance, performance, power and
ambition to move forward.
Since 1945, when the Jaguar logo
was first attached to a car that rolled
out of the Coventry factory in
England, the company has produced
some rip-roaring sports cars. Like the
SS 100, which was the first Jaguar to
break through the then magical 100
miles per hour barrier (hence the
reference to ‘100’ in the name). The
Jaguar E-Type, still considered by
many as the most beautiful car ever
made, powered by a 5.3-litre V12.
The XK120, XK140 and XK140.
After some tumultuous years, the
brand was sold to Ford in 1999 and,
sadly, the turbulence got worse. To be
frank, during this period only the most
diehard Jaguar fans managed to
convince themselves that parking a Jag
in their driveway was a good thing.
Quality of the vehicles, a traditional
Jaguar hallmark, and resale valuesIt’s a beastly, thunderous roar
that makes petrolheads giggle and
scares little children, as the rev
counter needle blasts towards the
6 000r/min mark. If you press a
button on the centre console it opens
up the exhaust even more and the
noise turns into thunder and lightning.
It’s like flipping the bird to an overly
politically correct world. We’d call it
the Trump button.
The SVR features the same
Variable Valve Active Exhaust
System, which first made its debut on
the F-Type. It’s a performance
exhaust system that not only increases
exhaust flow, but is 6.6kg lighter than
the standard system.
If you thought the SVR is all
about straight-line speed and noise
and very little else, you’d be mistaken.
Besides the stiffer spring set-up, the
special 21-inch SVR forged alloy
wheels are 2.4kg lighter at the
front and 1.7kg lighter than the
rear, and accommodate uprated
395mm brake discs.
It features an all-wheel-drive set-up
but it’s not a four-wheel-drive system
like you’ll find in a run-of-the-mill
AWD compact SUV. In the Jaguar,
the power is sent to the rear wheels,
and power is directed to the front (upRight: The
Jaguar F-Pace
SVR can
accelerate
from
0–100km/h in
4.8 seconds,
and does so in
the style that
has become
synonomous
with Jaguar.
Opposite
page, bottom:
When you
don’t feel like
chasing the
redline, you
can waft along
in supreme
luxury.
were pretty shoddy at the time.
In 2008, Ford sold the brand, along
with Land Rover, to Indian company
Tata Motors. You can imagine the
naysayers proclaiming it was to be the
end of the leaping cat.
It didn’t quite work out that way,
history reveals. Tata Motors provided
the habitually cash-strapped Jaguar
engineers with the one thing they
craved most: the budget to once again
create great Jaguars.
Fast forward to 2019, and the
F-Pace SVR compact SUV. With the
motoring world increasingly moving
away from sedans and hatches to
crossovers, SUVs and bakkies, it’s no
wonder the F-Pace is Jaguar’s
best-selling model with almost half
the share (of all Jaguar models) in
major markets such as the USA.
Mercedes-AMG, most
prominently, has shown what a big
role high performance models play in
a line-up, so an SVR (Special Vehicle
Operations – Land Rover) derivative
was inevitable.
What the Jaguar engineers have
managed to create in the SVR though,
is truly astounding. They slotted a
five-litre, supercharged V8 engine
under that bonnet, connected to an
eight-speed ZF gearbox. The engine
produces 405kW and 680Nm of
torque. But those numbers are
only part of the story. The noise
this V8 makes... well, it’s not a
noise. It’s a motoring spectacle of
staggering proportions.