Jaguar Magazine 02/2017 – American English

If you’d said when I first
THE CHIEF ENGINEER started at Jaguar 25 years
GRAHAM WILKINS – E-PACE ago that I’d be the Chief
CHIEF PRODUCT ENGINEER Program Engineer for a
performance SUV like this,
I’d have thought you were
crazy. But I knew that if we were really going
to break the mold and challenge the notions of
what a Jaguar could or should be, I’d need
a young and very talented team around me.
That’s what I had. And throughout this project
we just tried to think about things differently.
It’s the job I’ve always wanted.
When we started, we realized that many
customers want a car that makes them feel
the way a sports car does, but their life stage
or lifestyle choice means they need at least
four seats and plenty of space. So we started
talking about a sports car you could use every
day. We wanted to deliver the ultimate balance
between beauty and practicality.
I believe we’ve struck that balance. To me,
the packaging of the car is just as good as the
exterior design. If you look at the interior,
there’s huge attention to detail around the
storage in the car. There are some really
clever features in the storage box between
the front seats for example, and in the doors,
the glove box and the trunk to make sure the
car is very usable.
Of course we’ve been able to access the
technology from our sister brand Land Rover,
but we’ve tuned it differently for a Jaguar. In
the types of conditions you might want to use
your Jaguar in, like wet grass, and snow,
it’s absolutely capable.
I believe that you’ll buy a car once because
of the way it looks, but you’ll come back for
another if you feel like it’s met all your needs,
and even anticipated some you didn’t expect.
For me, the Jaguar E-PACE does this, and I’m
sure we’ll get a lot of loyal, repeat customers.
“A BALANCE BETWEEN
BEAUTY AND PRACTICALITY”
JAGUAR-TUNED
PERFORMANCE
• Intuitive
All Wheel Drive
• Low Friction Launch
• All Surface Progress
Control
• Available Active
Driveline for
increased agility
• Fully independent
suspension
• Optional Adaptive
Dynamics system
• Sophisticated multilink
rear suspension
• Torque Vectoring
for sharper turning
•4,000 lb towing
capacity
20 THE JAGUAR