Back in February, editor Reese Counts expressed his beef with the rotary shifter in the long-term Jaguar F-Pace. In short, the shifter wouldn't rotate into either drive or reverse.
Now, I've personally never experienced such an issue with that shifter design since it was unveiled in the original (and awesome) Jaguar XF. Yet, that early post highlights the other problem with the rotary shifter in the F-Pace as well as the XE and current XF. It is placed at the center of a large plastic trim piece that takes up as much space as a manual shift boot, completely defeating the space-saving purpose of an electronic shifter in the first place. Our particular F-Pace might have had that specific rotation challenge, but every F-Pace suffers from this waste of space.
I was therefore happy to see that the Jaguar F-Pace's mechanical cousin, the 2018 Range Velar, utilizes the same rotary shifter design but takes advantage of its space-saving capabilities.
It falls right at hand, and provides plenty of room for a pair of cupholders and a square-bin that could be used to place your phone or perhaps a juice box? Whatever, it's better than a giant piece of useless, not-particularly-attractive piano black trim. Actually, the entire set-up is similar to that original XF design, which used the rotary shifter for both practical and aesthetic reasons. It's still just as pleasing when you turn on the car and that shifter ever-so-coolly rises into your palm.
Really, this is just one of the ways the Velar's interior blows the F-Pace's out of the water. It's a more compelling design and the materials are considerably richer in look and feel. Of course, the Velar also costs considerably more, but I don't think that has anything to do with center console space efficiency.
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