andyd1969 said:
Thought you may be interested in seeing pictures of the I-Pace on display today and tomorrow at the York Designer Outlet.
I also managed to get a photo of the schedule of cars visiting dealerships around the uk.
Thanks for providing us with the heads-up on this Andy, I went and had a look at the car in York this morning, I wouldn't have known about it without your mention of it.
The one on display is basically a highly spec'd SE variant (over £80k!) It looks good in the Caesium Blue, with external carbon fibre trim and 20" wheels. Some initial impressions...positive and negative....judged against my current F-Pace
- The sports seats are very comfortable indeed and they really hugged my back nicely and provided good support right up to shoulderblade level.
- The example on show has a black interior with Oyster stitching detail and the door cards have 'padded' soft touch panels where you would naturally rest your elbow and also up at the window sill, makes it feel a nice quality interior.
- I wasn't as impressed with the steering wheel as I hoped I would be, I prefer the feel of the separate steering control buttons on my F-Pace to the smooth single ones on each side of the I-Pace wheel, but maybe that's just something that would 'grow' on me in time.
- I really like how the car looks externally, from every angle, even the 'squared-off' rear end design looks very good, but I am not at all impressed with the solid black plastic front grille which curves inwards at the top for that new air-scoop feature. Unfortunately, to me, it looks and feels very cheap for an £80k car, compared to the more traditional Jag grille, as on my F-Pace.
- I wasn't able to get an intuitive feel for the new InControl Duo Pro infotainment screens as they were just cycling on a 'demo' display mode, so it wasn't possible to actually interact with the controls, but the display resolution looked clear and high quality, as you would hope and expect.
- I'm not all that keen on the retracting external door handles, they don't feel high quality enough to me and feel like they might easily break. Personally, I would prefer 'normal' door handles if there was a choice (which, obviously, there isn't!)
- The boot space, whilst smaller than the F-Pace's, is still good and roomy overall, with a good low loading sill, but the lower roofline and sloping rear window will inevitably limit what goes in there (it would be a bit of a tight squeeze for my two dogs for example!!)
Overall, very glad to have had an opportunity to see the car 'in the flesh' . . . it feels nicely futuristic and updated, compared to my F-Pace, but if I am to go all electric in the near future I still have some reservations about whether it would be a practical enough vehicle for me to live with day-to-day, especially at this price-point. I do like many aspects of it, without any doubt, but the jury is still out for me on whether I'd actually trade my FP for one. I'm going to be very interested in what else comes on the market before I make that decision.