Jaguar will release a heavily updated F-Type next year, and the first spy images of a disguised prototype have emerged. Spotted outside the firm’s Gaydon engineering centre, the camouflaged car shows significant styling alterations for Jaguar’s Porsche 911 rival, including a dramatic overhaul of the front end with a reshaped bonnet and slim headlights relocated further down the front fascia. A redesigned grille also features, while at the rear a new tail-light design can be seen with a squared-off rear profile mimicking the recently facelifted XE saloon. It’s the first major styling revision since the F-Type was launched in 2013. Although the prototype’s interior hasn’t been seen, it’s expected that much of the more advanced technology and infotainment features from the I-Pace and the 2019 XE will make its way into the F-Type. That means new digital dials, a larger and more feature-laden touchscreen, and substantial upgrades to the materials. Jaguar Land Rover is now phasing out the long-used supercharged V6 in favour of a new turbocharged and hybridised straight six, and the F-Type will benefit from this more efficient powertrain. The turbocharged four-cylinder and supercharged V8 engines should be carried over to the new car with limited changes, however. What remains unclear is whether the new F-Type will retain a manual option. The current V6 is still offered with one in the UK, although it has reportedly been removed from sale in the US. Regardless, manuals are a tiny fraction of overall F-Type sales. Jaguar’s priorities for 2019 are the roll-out of the new XE and the launch of a similarly updated XF and F-Pace. However, we could see the revised F-Type revealed before the year is out, with an on-sale date in the first few months of
Origin: Jaguar F-Type to get major overhaul for 2020 model year
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SUV showdown: Range Rover Evoque vs major rivals
Warning: the comparison test you’re about to read involves a Land Rover. It therefore includes obligatory photographs taken off-road, in a Welsh limestone quarry known well to staffers of this magazine, for which the Autocar road test desk and photography department send their apologies. In this line of work, some visual clichés are simply too well-worn to resist. This particular cliché should certainly be acknowledged for what it is, though: a bit of artistic licence. Because while the second-generation Range Rover Evoque may be all-new and all-important for its creator, it’s every inch a compact SUV and not an ‘off-roader’. As such cars go, the Evoque is capable, rugged and versatile, but it’s very much an everyday road car. You know this. We know this. Yet while picturing it abandoned on double yellows, astride the kerb and hazards ablaze outside a primary school might have been more appropriate, such a photograph wouldn’t have looked half as pretty or been as much fun in the making. Our story so far on the new Evoque has brought us through early ride-along and international press launch and, very recently, UK first drive. Now, though, a chance to find out just how good this rather important Evoque is judged against its toughest opponents, two of which we are about to describe and rate it in specific reference to: the second-generation Audi Q3, which – roll up, roll up – is also new this year, and the Volvo XC40, which is Autocar’s incumbent compact SUV class favourite and without which these proceedings would otherwise be largely irrelevant. But, well, yes, you’re right: as it happens, there are four cars in the photograph you’ve been glancing at for the past minute or so. For reasons of general usefulness, fairness and accuracy, however, what you’re about to read will actually be a slightly truncated three-car comparison with an addendum on an interesting if unconventional new Lexus – the UX 250h – which, as it turns out, isn’t really a compact SUV at all. It might, though, provide welcome cause to wonder whether you need such a car quite as much as you thought you did. Modern compact SUVs remain suspiciously on-trend. Unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t have a problem with this. To me, they are increasingly popular for good reasons and are being bought by people who, had they been in the market 25 years ago, would have likely ended up in a biggish, volume-branded family saloon or estate mostly out of a lack of choice. We all get to that stage in our lives when a five-door hatchback simply isn’t enough car for us any more. The modern buyer who has reached that point can still buy a biggish, volume-branded family saloon or estate, of course. But why would they when they can have something that looks more stylish and ‘aspirational’ on the driveway; that has greater convenience, versatility and comfort about it; that’s smaller, and feels safer, than a biggish saloon and is easier to get into and see out of and park; and, perhaps most importantly, that has been made so temptingly affordable by the modern finance methods on which the car business is so squarely built in 2019? In the absence of other motivating factors, they clearly wouldn’t. That’s how a company such as Land Rover can become an increasingly well-established global car industry player – and the Evoque can outsell the Ford Mondeo across Europe for two years out of the past five, with every chance now of accelerating away from the old-guarder for good. This Evoque is pretty much the same size as the original version but for a few millimetres here and there. Opinions differ on exactly how new the ‘PTA’ model platform under the car really is, but it’s new enough to have accommodated a longer wheelbase and better on-board practicality, as well as mixed-metal construction and a whole family of 48V mild-hybrid powertrains. Sounds pretty new to me. The resulting car, in likely big-selling 2.0-litre, 178bhp diesel ‘D180 AWD’ form, remains a good 150kg heavier than the average weight of the rest of the cars in this test and is taller and less aerodynamic than most. And yet that mild-hybrid tech and nine-speed automatic gearbox allows it to get within 10% of matching the real-world cruising fuel economy of the most economical car here – which is the Audi, incidentally, which returns a typical 46mpg on a mix of UK motorway and A-road. Both the Q3 40 TDI quattro S tronic and XC40 D4 AWD automatic match the Land Rover for driven wheels and transmission spec, and both beat the Brit for peak power. But neither offers quite the same mild-hybrid technology, and neither has quite as much torque. Torque is important in cars like this, as I’m sure you won’t need telling – but we’ll come back to that. In order to keep the price points close, we elected to test the Evoque in lower-mid-range S-badged trim, knowing that, being a Range Rover, it’s a car that gets a bit prohibitively expensive in the dressier upper trim
Origin: SUV showdown: Range Rover Evoque vs major rivals
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