2017 Jaguar XE vs 2018

What's the difference?

James Cleary road tests and reviews the Jaguar XE Prestige 20t with specs, fuel consumption and verdict.

Sometimes success can become your greatest weakness. In the late 1960s, Jaguar stood as a post-WW2 British icon. Founder William Lyons’ instinctively curvaceous eye had influenced an amazing portfolio of all-time classics.

But following Sir William’s retirement in the early ‘70s, Jaguar was left in a quandary, and the question of how far to stray from a winning formula plagued it for close to 40 years.

While German prestige brands were attracting younger buyers with cool compact and mid-size models, Jaguar was stuck in a traditional, leather and walnut rut, producing large cars consistently referring back to its ‘history and heritage.’

The target audience was overwhelmingly men of a certain age, and in the ‘90s when the company finally took a deep breath and expanded its line-up with smaller models like the ‘reborn’ S-Type, and 3 Series-sized X-Type, they retained the old school Jaguar look. Turns out each simply offered a cheaper way into the brand for traditional buyers – old dudes, in little Jags.

You can point to British Leyland’s inept management of the brand in the 1970s and ‘80s, or subsequent owner Ford’s questionable empathy and understanding through the ‘90s and noughties, but it’s only over the last 10 years, under the control of automotive giant Tata, that Jaguar has really bitten the bullet and taken a genuinely fresh approach.

Jaguar’s line-up now ranges from the ground-breaking XF, through a fourth-gen XJ, to the stunning F-Type, compact XE and F-Pace SUV. What a glorious transformation.

And the entry level XE we’re testing here is a perfect representative of that change. Beautiful in a contemporary, ‘Cool Britannia’ kind of way, much closer to gender-neutral in its appeal, and pitched at a price point calculated to give its German competition something to think about.

Mid-size sedans were once the ultimate measure of a premium carmaker; not just the biggest seller in a brand's portfolio, but the ultimate gateway drug for young executives who would (hopefully) step up to bigger and more expensive models as their pay-packets ballooned.

But then, SUVs happened. And suddenly sedans didn't matter quite so much. If at all.

Take BMW, for example. The German marque shifted a total of 4451 units across its 3-Series and 4-Series range last year, a number now dwarfed by the 5171 units across the X3 and X4 SUV family over the same period.

And that shift is even more pronounced with a smaller brand like Jaguar. The UK marque shifted just 791 units of its XE sedan last year, while the F-Pace SUV moved 1275 units over the same period. And that’s a gap that will only get wider. 

And yet, having just spent a week in the snarling Jaguar XE S - all supercharged V6 and howling exhaust - we are left with one truly burning question; why?

Why are we climbing out of super athletic sedans and into stodgy SUVs? Why are we trading dynamics for ride height? And why do I have to give this back?