While Jaguar makes very good cars, they didn’t manage to sell nearly as many cars like BMW or Mercedes, two of their main competitors. One of the reasons why this happened is that they didn’t have a crossover in the lineup. This is about to be changed with the release of the F-Pace model.

Update 01/09/2016

New Spy Photos: 2018 Jaguar E-Pace Crossover

Over the recent years, Jaguar has made sure to confuse their fans with unimaginative names that they have been giving to their vehicles. Those names include “–Pace” before which goes a letter specific for each model. On these spy photos, you can see the masked E-Pace that will hit the market in 2018 along with the F-Pace and the all-electric I-Pace. The reason why Jaguar decided to stick with E- and F- as letters which represent the two models is because the former is proportionally similar to XE four-door as the latter is to the XF sedan, although the sedan is nine inches longer.

In the past couple of years, Jaguar has improved its sales and popularity in the U.S., but still it is nowhere near as good as Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. The company has managed to sell more vehicles in four-season states because all Jags have an all-wheel drive which is desirable. Since the F-Pace, which costs more than the E-Pace, has been a huge success on the market for Jaguar, we expect the E-Pace to carry on in the same way.

To the surprise of many, the new E-Pace and the XE sedan won’t be sharing the same platform. As you can see in these photos, the new model will not have a longitudinally mounted engine. You may ask how we know that and the answer is simple: the dash-to-axle ratio makes the hood short and thick, thus unable to carry the engine mounted in that way. The new vehicle will probably be underpinned by a version of the front-drive-based platform found on Land Rover Discovery Sport which is produced at the Jaguar Land Rover Halewood Body & Assembly facility in the UK. The cabins of the F-Pace and the XE sedan are not on a high level, but this chassis promises to make the E-Pace’s interior look better.

The platform shouldn’t pose a problem for customers as people interesting in owning a compact luxury crossover would probably go for practicality, style and an elevated seating position rather than raw sportiness. Even with this camouflage on, it is noticeable that the model has elegant curves and luxurious styling. In the front, the new E-Pace features slim headlights, a large front grille, and angry-looking air intakes. The rear is quite similar to the one F-Pace has but it is highly unlikely that the E-Pace will feature three rows of seats because of the vehicle’s roofline.

The new model will definitely have all-wheel drive as an option and will run on a turbocharged inline-four engine which can be found in the Discovery Sport and the Range Rover. This unit comes from Jaguar Land Rover’s Ingenium, engine family. The 2018 model will have a ZF-sourced nine-speed automatic gearbox as a standard.

The 2018 Jaguar E-Pace is expected to debut in the first half of 2017 and will hit the market by 2018. It is estimated that the vehicle will cost around $30,000, but will it be able to beat the Audi Q3, BMW X1, Infinity QX30 and Lexus NX is yet to be seen.

However, it now seems that Jaguar wants to add a couple of new crossovers, a larger version of the F-Pace and an entry level model which might be the rumored 2018 Jaguar E-Pace. While so far they haven’t said anything about it, a rather interesting camouflaged Evoque has been caught testing a while ago and at a closer inspection, the car is actually not a Range Rover.

Evoque-based Platform

This means that the upcoming E-Pace might be in fact using the rather old, but still up-to-date, the platform of the Evoque, a front wheel drive chassis which will underpin the future competitor of the BMW X3 and the Mercedes GLC. The price is unknown for now, and there aren’t any official details, but it is safe to assume that the car will be in fact based on the same chassis as the Evoque and on top of that it might even share with it most of its internal components. We really hoped that they would use the rear-wheel-drive platform of the F-Pace, but this would be just too expensive for the still small company. Instead, we have an already tested chassis that is more than capable to cope with all tasks that this model will bring.

Possible Engine Options and Specs

Powering this upcoming compact crossover will likely be a set of new Ingenium family engines which will range from a 2.0-liter turbocharged petrol mill all the way up to a 2.0-liter turbocharged diesel. We hoped for it to be rear wheel drive to use the V6 of the larger model, but this is not possible in this transverse-mounted application. Instead, the most powerful version of the upcoming E-Pace will likely use a 2.0-liter turbocharged petrol engine with close to 300 horsepower developed specifically for it in order to compete with the high-performance versions of its rivals. Don’t get us wrong, this is a great engine, and 300 hp is quite a decent power figure, but we would love to see even more from this premium brand.

2018 Jaguar E-Pace Design

The camouflaged version of the 2018 Jaguar E-Pace doesn’t really show us that much regarding exterior or interior design. However, we can clearly see a large grille on the upper half of the front end which might mean that it will be quite close in terms of looks to the larger F-Pace. The mirrors also seem identical, but the car is noticeably smaller. The floating roof effect will likely not be seen on the production version and instead we might just see a smaller version of the F-Pace SUV. The cabin is also very likely going to borrow heavily from the other current Jaguar cars, but it will probably be aimed at the younger buyers so expect a more modern design and premium materials in combination with a great amount of tech features.