Jaguar's F-Pace SVR could be a future classic - but not for the reasons you think

Singapore

JAGUAR'S cars are supposed to have grace, space and pace, but some have a lot more of that last quality than others. The F-Pace SVR is the latest example, making its debut in Singapore last week alongside a facelifted version of the XF, which is Jaguar's answer to the BMW 5 Series.

At S$442,999 inclusive of Certificate Of Entitlement, the F-Pace SVR doesn't sell for chump change, but it's one of Jaguar's fastest cars. Its 5.0-litre, supercharged V8 engine packs 550 horsepower, and launches the F-Pace SVR to 100km/h in only four seconds.

If you somehow find the space, the jet-like Jag will keep accelerating all the way to 286km/h.

Cars like the F-Pace SVR roll out of a special division at Jaguar Land Rover called Special Vehicle Operations (SVO).

Roughly 1,500 people (400 of them engineers) work at SVO, which managing director Michael van der Sande calls a business-within-a-business.

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"What we're lucky enough to be able to do is to take these fantastic cars that Jaguar, Land Rover and Range Rover make, and for the most demanding customer, make them even better, even faster, even more luxurious, even more special and personal to them," he told The Business Times.

SVO is often compared to Mercedes-AMG or BMW M, the German brands' high performance divisions, but Mr van der Sande's team doesn't only build fast cars.

Bespoke personalisation and classic car restoration are also part of the business, alongside Bowler Motors, a newly-acquired outfit that turns off-roaders from Land Rover and Range Rover into racing machines.

Such divisions are often money-spinners for carmakers, delivering relatively small sales but higher margins.

Mr van der Sande declined to provide details, but does admit that SVO's cars tend to bring home the bacon. "All I can say is that in almost all cases the profitability of what we touch is higher than the average," he said.

"We're not a marketing department or a PR department or a hobby shop, we really look at the profitability of each activity."

He says SVO's cars effectively sit at the happy intersection between Jaguar Land Rover's wealthiest, most passionate customers, and his team's ability to come up with cars that command prices high enough to make them worth building.

While it isn't a marketing department, SVO tends to grab headlines for building implausibly rapid cars, such as the XE SV Project 8. It was the most powerful Jaguar in history when it came out in 2019, and its major claim to fame was being the fastest four-door car around the famous Nurburgring circuit at the time.

It also sounds like a car that would have been a joy to work on. Among other goodies, engineers gave the Project 8 the biggest brakes in Jaguar's history, a 600 horsepower engine, carbon fibre racing seats and a huge, adjustable rear wing.

Mr van der Sande said that SVO is ostensibly not about speed, but about enhancing the character of a given Jaguar Land Rover product. That could mean making a Range Rover more stately, for example, or letting a customer commission his own colour for his next Jaguar roadster.

But his eyes light up at the mention of the fast cars. "We create high end models of our underlying cars really by amplifying the character of those cars, dialling them up to nine or 10 or sometimes, if we're feeling a bit wild, up to 11 as we did with Jaguar Project 8."

At the moment, the division's cars are slightly under-represented in our part of the world. SVO models account for roughly 10 per cent of Jaguar Land Rover's sales here, whereas the SVR version has a 26 per cent share of the F-Pace's market share in the Asia-Pacific markets outside of Singapore.

A spokesperson for Jaguar Land Rover Asia-Pacific said that organising events to let customers drive the SVO cars has helped sales in overseas markets, such as New Zealand.

"We are confident to let our SVR products speak for themselves. Once customers know and understand the product, or better yet, get a chance behind the wheel, they realise they have a robust and unique product on their hands - a product that is nearly unbeatable from a performance-dynamics-price standpoint," the spokesperson said.

One thing that could work in the F-Pace SVR's favour is that its snarling V8 engine gives customers the chance to see out the end of the fossil fuel era with a bang, rather than a whimper. Jaguar Land Rover itself has committed to making Jaguar an all-electric brand in just four years' time.

But Mr van der Sande says he is looking forward to the electric era.

"What I'm excited about is multi-motor solutions because using two, three, four motors or whatever we end up playing with, there's endless tuning opportunities to change the character of the dynamics of the car.

Oddly, while Mr van der Sande relishes the prospect of using future tech, he also has to keep one eye on the past.

SVO restores or recreates around 100 classic cars a year, a business that is labour intensive and not scalable, but one that protects Jaguar Land Rover's heritage.

It also dovetails with what SVO is ultimately about, Mr van der Sande said. "Effectively, what we try and do is kind of imagine what the classics of the future could be."

In that respect, a 550 horsepower Jaguar sport utility vehicle with a boisterous V8 engine makes perfect sense for SVO.