Forty grand turismo

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Giant test: Jaguar XE vs rivals The Jag’s dowdy dark blue is less fattering but brighter light and brighter hues reveal handsome, if perhaps disappointingly conservative lines that success in China and North America demands. There’s real drama at the front, but it’s strangely reminiscent of Volvo’s old S40 from other angles, and what is it with Jag’s wheel designs? The base XE seems to be wearing a set of 1970s Appliance Turbo Vec alloys normally found on porthole-festooned custom vans, and the R-Sport test car’s looked like a set of ancient GKNs you might have picked up from a Ripspeed catalogue around the same period. Luckily, other wheel designs are available. For all those misgivings, the XE would have out-posed a 3-series, had we brought one, and stands up well in the face of the slinkier 420d, the only car here optioned up with arch-flling 19-inch wheels that work the hardest despite their bigger footprint. BMW’s 20d engines have been showing reps how to have fun for 15 years and, thanks to continued evolution, still deliver the goods. Stomp the right pedal and the 420d pulls strongest, its 187bhp outpunching the Jag by 9bhp and the Benz by 19 (the pricier C250 CDI parries with 201bhp) to power through to 62mph in just 7.3sec. The Merc makes the same 295lb ft as its Munich rival, the XE 317lb ft, but the Jag fails to capitalise on its 22lb ft advantage, needing half a second longer to hit the benchmark, while the Merc shrugs of its power defcit to get within a tenth of the BMW, at 7.4sec. Swap Spanish mountains for German dual carriageways and the Jag would be all done by 140mph (a sop to the insurance industry, we’re told), while the Merc’s 144mph would trump its rival by a mere 2mph. Given that these are sports saloons, none of them feels truly rapid, and neither are any of their engines remotely characterful. You’ll need petrol power, or the BMW’s optional six-cylinder diesel, for that. But they’re grunty enough to keep you interested, and possess sufcient ratios in their transmissions (seven gears in the Merc, eight in the others) to keep them in the 2000-4500rpm zone where the turbos like to play. Powering up the smoothly surfaced ribbon of bitumen behind LaGuardia reveals a bit of a gap between second and third in the Jag, but in a straight run through the gears from there on, the revs barely seem to fall before the needle is picked up again for another trip to the redline. Decide to play those tunes yourself and your fngers will delight with the cool touch of real metal shift paddles, something even the F-type was denied on cost grounds at launch. They don’t come cheap, though, at £375. Sweet chassis and supple ride mean every road is a good one in the Jag 110 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | June 2015 BMW threw all its eforts into the ‘sport’ bit and forgot to tick the refinement box. Jaguar didn’t forget The BMW also uses the ZF 8HP ’box, but seems to deliver a bigger thunk to the back when each ratio comes on line. It’s the only car here to ofer anything resembling a normal automatic gearshifter: the XE gets Jag’s now-familiar rotary controller, and the Mercedes a column-shifter that frees up useful storage space on the console (unless you go for the more conventionally presented six-speed manual). A column shift doesn’t sound or look like sports saloon material, but that’s just one example of how Mercedes has confdently asserted its own agenda, after previously slavishly following BMW’s. Body motions are well controlled and the fast 2.1-turns variable-ratio steering rack imbues the C-class with a surprising pointiness, but never at the expense of sophistication or stability. This can do the twisty stuf with ease, but it’s not massively engaging. Task it with a high speed A-road run though, and that’s where it shows its mettle. The 420d is diferent. Rawer, more feelsome, less comfortable, it doesn’t deal with surface imperfections anything like as well, but keys you into that surface better. There’s less understeer in the fat-tyred BMW and more opportunity to experience the traditional sensations of a rear-drive chassis. No-one really turns the ESP of in these cars, much like no-one drives their new Lambo at 202mph, the diference between C220 and 420 being that you actually can in the BMW, and you might want to. The Jag complies too; at least to demands to deactivate the ESP, though the grip/grunt ratio is skewed in favour of the rubber so if you want to make tyre fres you’ll need the 335bhp XE S – or the XE R if you’ve got the patience to wait a year or two. But what even this humble diesel does show is that there’s more to4 C-class’s strangely cab backward stance not its finest hour, but you won’t care from inside that cab
KEY TECH: JAGUAR XE Aluminium chassis Jaguar is justifiably proud of the XE’s bonded and riveted aluminium chassis, the only aluminium structure in the class. It’s made possible because the XE shares the technology with the also completely new XF. There are big benefits over steel in terms of rigidity, but the news is not all positive. The chunkier structures aluminium construction requires impact on cabin space, and our test XE weighed just 5kg less than the steel C-class. But the rear-biased distribution of the few steel components – all four doors, the bootlid and the boot floor – helps create a perfect 50:50 weight distribution that contributes to the XE’s excellent handling balance. A key benefit in this company. June 2015 | CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK 111 95
Page 1 and 2: 14 cars tested, starring BMW 7-seri
Page 3 and 4: And you don’t even get the TT’s
Page 5 and 6: £150k, 552bhp turbo cabrio aces th
Page 7 and 8: Behold the first turbocharged Ferra
Page 9 and 10: A lightweight magnesium roof frame
Page 11 and 12: Cabrio test: 911 Turbo S vs Califor
Page 13 and 14: Mercedes C220 BlueTEC AMG Line BMW
Page 15: ORGET THE X-TYPE, the made-over F M
Page 19 and 20: Do not touch It may look like an iP
Page 21: Jaguar XE R-Sport 2.0D Price (as te

Forty grand turismo

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