![]() Several things quickly jump out: the design isn’t in the least derivative, but of all potential rivals it feels most comparable to a Porsche Cayenne or Infiniti FX, and both the strong overtones of F-type and the sense of length are striking. At 4.7 metres long and 1.63 metres high, it’s as tall as an Evoque and provides the meat in an Audi Q5/Range Rover Sport sandwich in terms of length. It’s hard not to smile and nod in approval: the C-X17 looks both absolutely fresh, yet so cohesively tied to Callum’s current design language that you’d instantly ID it as a Jaguar, badges or no. The C-X17 – a proper, working concept, just back from an on-location photo shoot – rolls out into daylight, the lustre of Caesium Blue paint glinting in the afternoon sunshine. Then Callum casts open the doors to a large, empty courtyard and the silence is broken by a car firing to life behind shuttered doors. Do you need to put multiple diffs and complexity in there? No.’ ‘Does it need to be as good as a Land Rover? No. ‘If you design a car with the suggestion of off-road capability, you need to fulfil that to a certain extent,’ he says. Callum is equally cogent when I ask whether a car of this nature – and with Land Rover so focussed on off-road prowess – actually needs to have any off-road ability at all other than that granted by its raised ride height. The SUV concept’s positioning versus Land Rover is a conundrum, especially as this is the first time the two thus far complementary brands have overlapped, but insiders are confident that the focus on sporting, curvaceous design puts clear water between the Jaguar and any Land Rover cousins. Its stablemate still rides high on the crest of the crossover SUV wave, and that trend shows no sign of abating: research specialists IHS Automotive predict sales of premium SUVs will increase 36% in the next five years.Ī production version of the C-X17 is a chance to cash in on all that, but it’s a treacherous tightrope for Callum to navigate, Jaguar’s sporting heritage looming large below while gusts of Land Rover sturdiness force sporadic bouts of frantic arm-flailing. The sales figures suggest it could be a good idea too: Jaguar might be the world’s fastest-growing premium brand with year-on-year retail sales blooming by 33%, but the 44,000 units it shifted in the first seven months of 2013 lag way behind Land Rover’s 198,000. I came round to the idea that we should try it.’ ![]() ‘I’m a sports-car man and my established view was that a Jaguar needed to be low, but there’s a generation out there whose idea of a must-have car is a crossover, and whole countries know nothing else. ‘Five years ago I wouldn’t have said a crossover was right for the brand,’ he reveals at an exclusive preview in Jaguar’s Whitley headquarters. So it may be comforting to know that even Jaguar design boss Ian Callum once felt the same way. It’s one of those crossover SUV things with a Jaguar badge stuck on, you’ll be thinking. I don’t doubt that a large number of you are looking at these pictures for the first time and recoiling in horror. IQ-Al will debut on Jaguar’s 3-series rival, due in 2015, but the car we’re getting a sneak preview of today, the C-X17 concept, gives a taste of the SUV due in 2016, set to be called either QX or Q-type. Now an all-new aluminium platform, initially called iQ-Al (although likely to be given a less clunky name), is set to be rolled out across all future models, reversing the ageing process yet further and allowing Jaguar to respond with a spring in its step to today’s liquid market segments. Perceptions have shifted, expectations risen, and the possibilities of what Jaguar can do have morphed beyond recognition in just a few short years. XK, XF and XJ were like Omega-3 supplements to oil its achy joints, F-type an intravenous shot of Viagra. Like an automotive Benjamin Button, Jaguar has spent the last few years shedding the trappings of advanced age, waking in the morning to find it no longer needs a stick to walk, finally allowing its Reader’s Digest subscription to lapse.
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