Jaguar's C-X17 SUV is still a few years away from production, but our brief first drive of the radical concept shows huge promise.
From the driver's seat you look over the Jaguar C-X17’s lumpy bonnet, rather than down it as usual, yet this car could only be a Jaguar. It may offer a different view of the road from that of any other Jaguar ever built, but there's enough evidence in those shapes over which you're seeing the road to remove the need for any kind of label.
The middle of the bonnet has a reassuring power bulge, not identical to any other Jaguar's but strongly related. At either side, two gentle curves gracefully intersect at the car's frontal extremity, one pair gliding across the top of each headlight, the other describing the muscle that runs above each front wheel.
This is the latest iteration of C-X17, the concept version of the all-wheel-drive "sports crossover" Jaguar will surely launch in two or three years' time off the enormously expensive all-aluminium architecture in which it is pouring every earned pound - and then some - to build a viable future among the world's premium car manufacturers.
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