Jaguar's New Small SUV Underwent a Grueling 25-Month Test Program

Jaguar’s new E-Pace compact SUV underwent a grueling 25-month test program that took it from the dusty deserts of Dubai to the straights of the Nurburgring and beyond.

The automaker says it subjected the E-Pace to a particularly stringent test program to “test the vehicle’s durability and ensure that the model lives up to the Jaguar brand’s ‘Art of Performance’ philosophy.” It took more than 150 prototypes to four continents, testing the vehicle on tracks like the Nardo test circuit and the Nurburgring and in extreme environments such as the Arctic Circle and the desert.

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The coldest temperature the E-Pace was exposed to during the program was a shocking -40°F, while the hottest recorded temperature was 118.4°F. They also drove the vehicle into a 16-foot deep pool of water and left it there for an hour with the engine shut off before returning to the car, switching it back on and driving it out with ease. Engineers also completed more than 400 laps of the Nurburgring in prototypes, but we wouldn’t expect Jag to be boasting about lap records anytime soon.

“Our team of world class engineers and dynamics specialists have meticulously tuned and developed a true Jaguar car,” said, chief production engineer for the E-Pace program, Graham Wilkins. “Months of intense testing on roads and tracks around the world have delivered a compact performance SUV that is true to Jaguar’s performance DNA”

The 2018 Jaguar E-Pace will debut live on Jaguar’s YouTube channel and Facebook page on July 13th at 3:00 p.m. ET. In the meantime, you can see it undergo some of the aforementioned tests in the video below.