Unveiled at the Frankfurt International Motor Show, the first Jaguar SUV of any kind has made quite a stir among the world’s motoring press. We’re still trying to get our collective heads around the idea of a 4×4 Jaguar SUV. It does seem a little strange doesn’t it? The British marque has only ever produced ‘low-slung’ saloon and sports cars, and even the company’s director of design, Ian Callum, has said he was sceptical of the SUV until fairly recently.
Aside from the mobile phone industry, nothing moves faster than the car industry and with respect to one of the longest-surviving luxury brands in the world, the 4×4 SUV Crossover market was quite simply a segment they couldn’t afford not to be competing in.
“No self-respecting premium player can possibly survive without an SUV or crossover in its range. This sort of car is the aspirational car of choice for an entire new generation. This is what they want,” Callum says.
The nice thing about the Jaguar C-X17 crossover concept is that it marks new territory for Ian Callum and Jaguar. Ian Callum, just recently, had the vast and unenviable task of recreating a modern day E-Type. He succeeded astoundingly with the gorgeous F-Type, but it could have gone oh-so-very wrong had he not been as careful about it as he was. The Jaguar C-X17 on the other hand has nothing to live up to, it has a clean slate to work with.
Prettier crossovers we haven’t seen as yet. It’s 4.7 m long (that makes it longer than a Range Rover Evoque) and 1.6 m tall, but it’s the finesse of the design team that has helped shape the sexy proportions.
The front overhang is short, the signature grille is becoming more-established with every car and the C-X17 manages to be both confident and assertive as a result. The windscreen is acceptably raked, but not excessively so. The rear wheel arches are powerful and sculptural all at the same time, while the rear light treatment is pure F-type.
Gloss black touches surround the windows and are teamed with bright blue paintwork for a satisfying contrast. Big 23-inch five-spoke split alloys will certainly be shrunken down when the car makes it into production, but they do look good for now. Inside, the Jaguar C-X17 is pure concept, with four individual seats, a panoramic roof, masses of leather and even a pair of fold-out picnic chairs in the boot.
The C-X17′s cabin gets ultra-slim seats that are mounted low down for a sporty cockpit feel. The multi-media touch screen in the C-X17 concept is a system that runs the entire length of the car’s transmission tunnel and works off the car’s Wi-Fi to each of the inter-connecting screens.
The audio system in the C-X17 is from UK-based company, Meridian, and there are dash-mounted tweeters, secret speakers in the A- and B-pillars, with a digital sound processing unit. TFT (thin film transistor) screens are emblazoned throughout the car and there’s a head-up display as well. Highly sophisticated, attractive and interactive connectivity is clearly what Jaguar wants its future crossover to be all about.
As always, however, we don’t know what actually powers the Jaguar C-X17 Concept, but talk is of a range of new 4-cylinder, super-economical engines that offer sub-100g/km of CO2 emissions. The Jaguar Crossover also gets brake-based torque vectoring and intelligent all-wheel drive to make driving it a cinch. More than that, however, the Jaguar C-X17 is actually all about Jaguar’s new, lightweight aluminium platform, which they’re calling ‘iQ Al’ and about how that will be shared with Jaguar’s upcoming, BMW 3 Series competitor. We certainly look forward to that one.
