Jaguar I-Pace
Why 8.5: Jaguar got an electric crossover to market before the Germans and won European Car of the Year with it, then watched the software, the charging speed and the residuals go the wrong way. What is left is a genuinely well-steering 2.1-tonne EV that costs less than a used Golf GTI, which is exactly the kind of car people drive rather than admire.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The twin motors are quiet enough that tyre roar and the air conditioning arrive first, which is at least restful. But Jaguar's Active Sound Design is a faint hum rather than a composition, so it does not earn even the Taycan's deliberate synthesised layer.
electric · rated 0.6 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €64k (2019) → €18k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Two ISOFIX positions on the outer rear seats, the outer pair being the ones the standard covers.
The rear anchors are the supported route — the manual points child seats there, and front-passenger ISOFIX is the exception rather than the rule. A belt-mounted seat up front needs the airbag off, and cars with a rear row don't always fit a deactivation switch, precisely because the rear seats exist.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
The I-Pace arrived in 2018 as the first credible answer to the Model X from a legacy manufacturer, and for about eighteen months it looked like Jaguar had stolen a march on everybody. Then the charging curve — capped around 100 kW when rivals were doing double — the early software recalls, and a battery-supply constraint that limited production all landed at once, and the residual value went into a hole it never climbed out of. A car that stickered at nearly £65,000 in Britain was a £20,000 car within five years, one of the steepest documented depreciation curves of any modern premium vehicle. That collapse is the whole ownership story here, and it is a happy one for the index. Nobody speculates on an I-Pace. Nobody garages one. The second and third owners bought a fast, quiet, comfortable, aluminium-bodied Jaguar for hatchback money and use it as a commuter, which is what it was always best at — the chassis was the part Jaguar genuinely got right, and it flatters a driver in a way none of its contemporaries manage. Production ended in 2024 with no replacement, which fixes the fleet at what exists. High mileage, no flipping, and a car whose reputation is now well below its actual competence.