DRIVE
The wagon version of the Jaguar XF is intended to be just as good as the saloon, but in many ways it’s better
The wagon version of the Jaguar XF is intended to be just as good as the saloon, but in many ways it’s better.
The last time Jaguar revealed an estate version of the XF, four years had elapsed since the launch of the saloon. Flu pandemics come and go at a quicker rate. This time round, with Gaydon’s impressive, investment-heavy playbook now on a metronomic footing, it’s two years on the nose. That’s progress. The model is a recognisable descendant of the first generation: still frumpily dubbed Sportbrake because, Jaguar being Jaguar, the car is ostensibly meant to prioritise appearance over practicality.
Really, of course, the maker wants it both ways and, thanks to the efforts of the styling department, that’s precisely what it gets. In the flesh, the wagon is a corker. There’s no special recipe here not already deployed on any number of rivals (the low, raked roofline; the high, chaste shoulder; the wraparound lines; the tapered bottom), but it all colludes magnificently. And because it better conceals the saloon’s curiously long rear deck, it immediately stakes a credible claim as Jaguar’s best-looking non-sports car.
Gaydon doubtless sniffed the lifestyle potential of all this when the Sportbrake was still made of clay; hence those F-Type-cloned rear lights and the chrome exhausts. To their credit, the engineers accommodated all this curviness while still hollowing out a proper rectangular crypt of a boot.
True, there’s barely any more room in there than aboard the saloon — but its sides are so clean that you’ll convince yourself otherwise. And with the seatbacks folded impressively flat (another admirable internal target), the XF apparently boasts one of the longest load spaces in its class.
Inevitably, this all comes at a cost. To you, the buying public, it’ll be a premium of around 300,000 baht over and above the equivalent saloon. To the car itself, it’s weight. As well as requiring some more bodywork and the extra bracing that goes with it, Jaguar has fitted self-levelling air suspension to the Sportbrake’s shapely rear — meaning that, all told, your extra money pays for around
115kg 5kg oof surplus bulk. This slightly unwieldy fact does the latest 240hp 2.0-litre diesel Ingenium unit no favours at all. Jaguar claims 6.7 seconds for the AWD version’s 0-100kph time; it feels at least a second slower than that in the real world and hasn’t shaken the slight sense of ponderousness identified during the Range Rover Velar’s road test either. Combine the Sportbrake’s less than spirited overtaking performance with middling refinement under load and the niggle starts to swell ominously. Good job, then, that virtually everything else the car does works like a cold compress on the engine bay’s shortcomings. The chassis’ benchmark was the saloon’s class-leading dynamic flair and, given the unsettling aspect of air springs and additional ballast, its mimicking of the XF’s trademark handling compromise is highly commendable. Measured against its passively sprung, rear- drive sibling, a modicum of change athleticism has unarguably evaporated, but the wagon feels so assertively poised that it’s barely missed. Much like the saloon, it’s the extraordinary parity given to sure- footed, super- snug, express- grade progress on the one hand, and free- flowing, B- road- scything responsiveness on the other, that generates a small mountain of driver goodwill. Marginally softer, stockier and deliberate the estate might be (especially coupled with four- wheel drive), it is the all-court roundedness of the experience that once again ends up being the takeaway sentiment. That it arrives in a package with considerably more rear head room, a bigger, more usable boot, a more desirable design and the uncannily likeable ability to stow a large wardrobe is invariably to the model’s advantage. Switch out the Ingenium unit for the more forceful oil-burning V6 and, unless you work at Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz, the timely return of the Sportbrake is another Jaguar milestone worth cheering.