Jaguar XE 25t Portfolio India review, test drive

What's it like to drive?

In a word, brilliant. Ever since the XF, Jaguar has been challenging BMW, segment by segment, as the maker of fun-to-drive luxury cars, and though we haven’t had a chance to drive it head to head with a 3-series yet, we strongly feel this might be the case with the XE too. A few significant things to note about this car are its aluminium intensive monocoque chassis - a segment first, its trick integral link suspension that allows greater stiffness without compromise to comfort, and its electric steering - Jaguar’s first ever. These all have a huge bearing on the way the XE drives.

But first, the engine. It’s the same one we’ve sampled in the XF and the XJ, and even in those big cars, its 237bhp and 34.67kgm felt ample. As you can imagine then, it makes the small, light XE feel like a rocketship. Flatten the throttle and the punch you get is just immense, and it just courses on a relentless wave of torque to the redline thereafter. It even makes a pleasing buzz at higher revs. Even in mundane city driving, there’s enough pep low down in the rev range to make smooth progress, and for the most part, the eight-speed ZF gearbox does a good enough job. It does, however, hesitate sometimes when you want a sudden change of pace at part throttle - it will suddenly shift down, giving you a huge hit of power when all you need is a small increase in pace. This can be worked around if you use the shift paddles, however, and it’s significantly less pronounced in Sport mode.

Apart from this Sport mode for the engine and gearbox, there’s also four drive modes you can choose from - Eco, Normal, Dynamic and Winter - which affect the steering, engine and AC performance. There’s also stop-start for eking out that little bit more fuel from your drive.

Where the XE really impresses is the chassis. Jaguar really seems to have nailed the ride-handling balance with this car, and it works with the maturity of something far more luxurious and expensive. You could put some of this down to the choice of 255/55 R17 tyres, but credit where it’s due is to the suspension. For one, it rounds off sharp edges really well and barely thunks and thuds at all, and it does this while still riding completely flat at high speeds.

More than that, Jaguar has absolutely nailed its first ever crack at electric power steering. The amount of weight and feedback you get from the wheel makes it feel as good as any of the old-school hydraulic units we’ve experienced on all the company’s previous models. It’s perhaps not the quickest steering rack, but it makes up for that by letting you feel every millimetre of lock as you twirl it, and body control too is properly impressive. This all makes the XE an absolute delight from behind the wheel.