Everybody who attended kindergarten in the ’90s knows to „never judge a book by its cover,“ but if there’s one platitude I had to teach myself over the years, it’s that you should never judge a book by its premise either. The 2024 Jaguar F-Pace SVR—a car-based performance luxury SUV riding on an eight-year-old design and assembled in the West Midlands—is, on premise alone, exactly the sort of car you’d expect to have to make excuses for.
„It’s compromised and interior panels don’t line up, but it’s loud and it’s fast!“ you might imagine an owner proclaiming. Well, I’m happy to report that you should indeed never judge a book by its premise because even though, yes, F-Pace SVR is loud, F-Pace SVR is fast, it’s also objectively quite a good car even in all of the ways it probably doesn’t need to be.
Pros
Much like a V8 Lexus or, y’know, most other performance Jags, the F-Pace SVR is one of those cars whose big party piece is the way it sounds. Its 5.0-liter supercharged V8 is gravelly and loud but in a refined and elegant way. It isn’t as aggressive as the one you get in the F-Type R sports car which, in comparison, sounds a bit too aggro if we’re honest. It’s trying too hard. This, though, sounds just right. It’s reasonable under light commuting, but stick it in the mad modes and really get on it and the SVR F-Pace buzzsaws on full-throttle upshifts and crackles on liftoff, it’s wonderful.