What kind of name is F-Pace anyway? Is the whole Jaguar range going to receive an “F” prefix, like the upcoming SUV, or is it just a one-off for this model?
It will be comforting to learn that things could have been worse. That’s because, as Jaguar design director Ian Callum told Auto Express during the 2015 NAIAS, that at some point, the company was considering the X-Type moniker.
Rings any bells? It was the name of the sub-par saloon and estate that the British brand rolled out in 2001 and axed not a moment too early in 2009, to fight the BMW 3-Series and its likes.
Riding on a modified Mondeo platform, as Jaguar was at the time owned by Ford, it failed miserably and, dare we say it, was worse than the donor model, which was a very competent mainstream car. Even the company itself admitted that this whole project was a mistake.
“Creatively speaking, I had little role in the choice of the F-Pace name, but I was clear on saying it needed to have a reference to sportiness”, said Callum. “We played with the letter X a lot – XQ was one option but we felt Q is too much of an Audi thing, and of course Aston Martin uses Q.”
No Q, then. So, what was next on the menu? “We even toyed with the idea of calling it X-Type, which would have been an obvious one. Had there not been an X-Type in the past, it would have been a good choice. I was brave enough to go for X-Type, but there were a lot of other people who weren’t.”
He divulged that around eight names were put on the table before being short-listed to three, and then the F-Pace moniker was chosen for the production model.
Back to the question in the intro: it appears that in the 1960s, Jaguar run an ad campaign named “Grace, Space and Pace”. Now the F-Pace starts making some kind of sense. When asked if the other two would be used in future Jags, Callum said “it had been a good project and we might do another one. XJ would be F-Grace!”
Photo Gallery
