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.
There is bright work, but the effect is simplicity: a generously proportioned pair of round dials ahead, a high centre console running right through the car which, fascinatingly, can turn itself into a screen, a louvered light shade above that plays patterns on the lower interior, and a simple raked fascia with a metal trim-piece at its trailing edge, with 'Jaguar' embossed above the console.
The essential "volumes" of the interior are as they might be in production, says Jaguar advanced design chief Julian Thomson, who is proud of what his team achieved, but the colour and trim are, in essence, experiments.
The car may look slick, but the crudity of its under-bits come instantly into focus as we begin to roll. Prototypes are usually like that. Before I go, an engineer lurking in the rear selects Drive with a Tommy-bar mysteriously inserted in a hole in the console.
The car growls forward with a will, propelled too well by its 3.0-litre supercharged engine as used in the XF and XJ, but how strange to drive a Jag without an "engineered" exhaust note. It's too loud, and somewhere along the pipe, the exhaust is blowing. The suspension reacts alarmingly to the most modest bumps - these are 23-inch wheels, chosen for visual impact, not stability - and there is some disconcerting clanking from the transmission on the overrun.
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