2016 Car of the Year runner-up: The incredibly beautiful Jaguar F-PACE

Hollis Johnson

Editorial note: Business Insider just named its 2016 Car of the Year, the Acura NSX. This week, we're re-running our reviews of the five cars that almost beat out Acura for the honor.

It's a Jaguar. It's an SUV. It's a Jaguar SUV.

At the Los Angeles auo show in 2015, Jaguar Land Rover officially unveiled its first-ever sport utility for the US market. About a year later, we got our hands on it.

In the flesh, the vehicle, called F-PACE, was as stunning on the street as we initially thought it was on the showroom floor in LA. The name, which is meant to connect the crossover in nomenclature with Jag's F-Type sports cars, is weird. But the machine is beautiful - the most gorgeous SUV currently available, we think, thanks to the aesthetic ministrations of designer Ian Callum.

Jaguar shares a corporate stable with Land Rover, so it's not as if these folks don't know how to bolt together a stupendous offroader. They've been doing it for decades.

But how would a Jaguar SUV stack up? After all, Jag is a sedan-and-sports-car brand, full of British panache. Does a suburban family hauler really fit, even it if that's what the market wants?

We had a few days in the Northeast with the 2017 F-PACE to find out:

Photos by Hollis Johnson.