TURF WAR: Jaguar SUV or Range Rover Evoque?

IMAGINE Saturday's Grand National is a two-horse race - and you own them both. You can't lose.

That pretty much sums up Jaguar Land Rover right now.

The BIG FAVOURITE is the £30,000 Evoque.

It is the fastest-selling Range Rover — 500,000 in five years — and the Halewood factory, just down the road from Aintree, builds a car every 80 seconds.

The Evoque steered JLR to a record 25,000 UK sales last month.

The CHALLENGER is the bigger £34,000 Jaguar F-Pace, Jaguar's first SUV.

It's getting plenty of backers, too — 2,500 orders in the UK, 10,000 worldwide — and that's BEFORE anyone has even driven it.

But JLR is happy to let its two "statement" SUVs fight over the same turf.

UK boss Jeremy Hicks said: "There is room for both."

The exploding SUV/crossover market is set to grow another 50 per cent to 1.4MILLION globally by 2020 — and JLR isn't finished yet.

There's another baby Jag SUV in the oven at Solihull. And it will have the option of electric.

So what's the F-Pace like to drive? A thoroughbred.

A roomy, five seat family SUV with the beating heart of a Jaguar. It borrows heavily from the F-Type sports car — including the top-end 380hp supercharged V6 — but the real brilliance is the aluminium body. Less weight equals performance. Seemples. Or pair it with the entry 2-litre diesel — also in the Evoque — and you have the economy and efficiency of a supermini. Jaguar quote 57mpg and 129g/km CO2.