Jaguar XE, a First Impression

Jaguars smallest, can it be any good? We find out.

The F-Type ushered in a new era for Jaguar, it was the first success in a line of future successes according to the brand. We haven't had our hands on a F-Type yet, but deriving from the sales it is easily concluded that Jaguar is going onto their self-proclaimed success streak. We got to enjoy our first bit of F-Type in the form of Jaguars entry-level sedan, the all new XE and spiritual successor of the S-Type. Why am I referring to 'a bit of F-Type'? Well the steering wheel comes directly from that car and they make sure you know this. They are proud of this car and for good reason as we were about to find out.

Ages on end

I haven't been doing this for ages so my track record for these type of cars isn't decades old, but I have driven my share of this segment and always found the BMW E90(the sedan) to be the benchmark. Fun to drive, confident on the road and sufficient power as long as you didn't go for the entry-level engines. The XE seriously made me doubt that benchmark, but I didn't have enough time to make a serious comparison.

"spiritual successor of the S-Type"

We were given two version, a diesel in the form of the E-Performance equipped with 5k euros worth of options and 25T equipped with the R-Sport package. I won't go into the car's performance figures or other stats since this is a first impression but I will tell you about the 'performance-feeling'. Where I often found entry-level engines in the E90 to be insufficient, the E-Performance didn't feel underpowered at any moment. The ZF transmission kept the torque on the sweet spot and shifted down early enough when I wanted to get going. Where often diesel technology is heavy on the front end of the car, I was curious if I would find a difference with the 240 horsepower 25T. I didn't really as both cars felt equally stable on the front and back. No raw diesel sound entered the cabin and that was a bit of a downside of the 25T as no exhaust note survived the noise isolation.

Verdict

I was surprised about the car, the level of quality( chassis wise, interior wise ) was far higher than I had expected. Why I say this is because it's an all new car and not an evolution of endless models. This often results in flaws or imperfections due to the lack of decades of feedback. The CJ team went wild when speculating for a possible R or RS model in the future to compete with the M, Renn Sport and AMGs of this world. I am looking forward to spending more time with this car for the love of testing and photographing it.Many thanks to our friends at RAC for giving us the opportunity to test the XEs.