Upon its U.S. debut, today’s Nice Price or No Dice F-PACE won both the World Car of the Year and Design of the Year awards at the New York International Auto Show. Let’s find out if this diesel edition has an equally award-winning price.
The 1978 BMW 316 we looked at on Friday had to be imported privately as no such model was ever officially offered by its maker in the U.S. market. Nice as it appeared, its entry-level specs made most of you ask: “What was the point?” Perhaps more pointedly, you awarded the car’s $15,000 asking price with a damning 88 percent No Dice downvote.
I’d like you to take a moment to think about something. Don’t worry; I’m not going to ask you to do any mental heavy lifting — I know it’s Monday and all. What I want you to consider is the following: when did you last see a Jaguar F-PACE on the road? It’s probably been a minute, right? Now consider, was that F-PACE a diesel? It could very well have been. Despite other manufacturers abandoning diesel engines, especially here in the U.S., Jaguar plowed ahead with the F-PACE, offering a compression-ignition four-pot on its mission-critical mid-sized crossover for its first few years on the market. These days, Jag will only sell you an F-PACE with a gas engine, offering a choice of four-, six-, and eight-cylinder sizes.
That makes this 2017 Jaguar F-PACE 20d (for 2.0-liter Diesel) a rather rare bird in today’s market. With its “Ingenium” Diesel, the F-PACE offers OK performance countered by pretty decent fuel economy. Power output is 180 horsepower and 318 lb-ft of torque, but that’s got to move the mid-sized wagon’s not-insubstantial 4340 lb weight, and it isn’t going to win any races doing so. On the plus side, the Diesel F-PACE can easily hit 30 miles per gallon on the highway.
The rest of the F-PACE is pretty straightforward. Jag designed the model to compete with Porsche’s Cayenne, and its outer dimensions and interior space are similar to that model. This one is a down-market Premium model, which means it lacks such niceties as sports seats or a big center stack display. The basics are there, and it still has the funky shift dial for the eight-speed automatic. Other nice-to-have features noted in the ad include Adaptive Cruise Control, a power liftgate, and memory front seats.
According to the ad, this F-PACE has a healthy 162,000 miles on the clock. Painted in Candy Apple Red over black factory alloys, it doesn’t show much wear and tear from the years and those miles. Another plus: there are only 1,000 miles on the recently replaced tires.
The interior is also up to snuff, with no apparent wear on the leather upholstery or failures of any of the plastics. It’s all black in here, and hence a bit somber, but while the piano-black trim dates the car, the rest of the space seems inoffensively styled and well-built. The title is clean, and the seller claims that a recent service and inspection have prepared the F-PACE for a new owner.
At the outset, I asked you to think about the last time you saw one of these on the road. It’s a rare sight here in the States, as Jag doesn’t sell many of these. That’s too bad for the brand, as the model remains the company’s best-selling product here in the U.S. There are just too many other options from better-respected marques, including Land Rover, which sells the F-PACE’s platform mate, the Velar.
Some people like to march to the beat of a defiant drummer, though, and nothing says “I’m an eclectic individual” better than a Diesel Jag. Could that opportunity be worth this F-PACE’s $12,000 asking price?
What do you say? Is this odd-bodkin of a Jag crossover worth that kind of cash as it’s presented in its ad? Or is that too much for something so excessively weird?
You decide!
Birmingham, Alabama, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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