2017 Jaguar XE Diesel First Drive Review: More Growler Than Leaper

So far most of our experience with Jaguar’s light, lithe, brilliant-handling new 3 Series/C-Class fighter has been in the brawny V-6 version. The middle-rung engine, the $1,500 optional Ingenium diesel four on the 20d model, has been scarce in local press fleets. We lined up a personal drive in one during a recent trip to Old Blighty, and just to add a small degree of forbidden fruit to the test, we got one that was bolted to a six-speed manual transmission instead of the wonderful eight-speed automatic that all XEs bound for the U.S. will get.

Let’s just come right on out now and assuage anyone pining for this manual to knock it off. This is an unhappy combination in this car. The shifter and linkage feel mechanical and direct enough, though the shift knob itself is a bit bulkier than ideal. The problem is that six ratios do a crappier job than eight at letting the car ride the wave of low-end torque that this turbo oil burner cranks out. With three adults and luggage on board, many a modest hill approached at 50 mph on a B-road required one or two downshifts to find a ratio that could pull the grade. Sure, the engine’s lusty 317-lb-ft torque output is perfectly capable of scaling any road with ease in the right gear, but when your elbow is doing all that gear swapping, it makes the car feel big and clunky.

Similarly, when drivers like most Americans, who are less accustomed to piloting diesels, drive briskly away from a stop in this overtly sporty car, they’re likely to overstay their welcome in each gear, thinking they’ll unleash all 178 of its horses up near the 5,000-rpm redline. This just wastes time, as the power peaks at 4,000. The ZF electronics take all of this guesswork out, silently whisking between ratios at just the right time to scale a hill with confidence or deliver the promised mid-7.0-second 0-60 acceleration. (Here’s a good opportunity to point out that for all those quips about “Americans buy horsepower but drive torque,” please note that although the diesel makes just 15 lb-ft less torque than the supercharged gas V-6 in the XE S, it’s the latter’s 162-horsepower advantage that’s responsible for its claimed 4.9-second 0-60 time.)

The EPA has yet to rate the 2.0d, but our Real MPG partner’s British counterparts have run the numbers on an XE 2.0d with the automatic and returned a 37.5-mpg combined rating on their slightly different British test cycles. Those results, while impressive for a 3,500-pound car, nevertheless fall somewhat short of the 43.0 mpg that rival BMW’s 320d achieved and the 42.5 mpg measured on a Mercedes C220d on the same test cycles. Auto start-stop contributes somewhat to lowering real-world fuel consumption, and this system ranks solidly mid-pack in terms of how noticeable it is when starting and stopping. At least it never provoked me to switch the system off.

Beyond these specifically diesel-related observations, the car is a Jag XE through and through, and one with a slightly lighter nose at that. It displays essentially the same delightfully responsive and expertly weighted steering feel we’ve lauded in previous encounters with the XE, as well as the more-agile-than-Mercedes-C-Class handling dynamics and the smoother-than-BMW-3-Series ride comfort that helped it win a head-to-head comparison against the BMW 335i.

So should you opt for the 2.0d or spring for the far thirstier supercharged gas V-6 when contemplating a Jag XE? (Note that we have yet to sample the base 2.0-liter, turbocharged gas engine of the 25t base car.) If you’re a regular visitor to this site, then you and your pals will likely be disappointed with the oil burner because it just really seems inherently less Jaguar-y in the same way that the 3.0-liter diesel seemed to demean the Maserati Ghibli diesel I sampled two years ago. But if you’re a newbie who never reads Motor Trend and just clicked by here while researching which car to lease next, then by all means give the diesel a test drive. You’ll probably love it.

2017 Jaguar XE 2.0d
BASE PRICE	$37,395-$38,895
VEHICLE LAYOUT	Front-engine, RWD/AWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan
ENGINE	2.0L/178-hp/317-lb-ft turbodiesel DOHC 16-valve I-4
TRANSMISSION	8-speed automatic (6-speed manual on Euro-spec test car)
CURB WEIGHT	3,500 lb (mfr)
WHEELBASE	111.6 in
LENGTH X WIDTH X HEIGHT	183.9 x 72.8 x 55.7 in
0-60 MPH	7.4 sec (mfr est)
EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON	Not yet rated
ON SALE IN U.S.	Currently

 

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