Country estate getaway
A FAMILY WEEKEND away in Dorset beckoned. Cottage on a farm. Kids, dogs, mud, kids, mud, kids, food shopping, kids, maybe browse an antiques market, visit a stately home. And probably more mud. Perfect credentials for testing an SUV to the hilt, then. Only I’m a bit, well, bored with them. The novelty’s worn off. Heavy, thirsty, massively popular yet in the face of the prevailing zeitgeist. Just massive full stop, frankly.
What did we do before them? Estate cars! And I was always a big fan of the original Jaguar XF Sportbrake, yet I hadn’t tried the new one. Despite the aluminium construction, both XF and F-Pace tip the scales at a too-heavy 1800kg+; there’s not much in it boot-wise, the XF’s being a tad smaller seats-up but its load floor is usefully lower and it swallowed
everything. We don’t travel light. (Fussy about pillows. Four of them lay on top of our coats and obliterated the view aft.)
This 300 R-Sport AWD was powered by the 296bhp 2.0-litre Ingenium petrol turbo four. In Comfort mode it’s neither the most fleet of foot nor the sportiestsounding, grumbling a bit while the eight-speed auto drags its heels. But shift it into Sport mode and there’s a revelatory transformation. This spacious family estate will hustle: it’s taut, muscular and deftly damped, so the ride is firm and flat though never harsh, and cornering is incisive. Put simply, it’s brisk, refined and fun. Feels like money has been spent on the dynamics.
Perhaps they saved some on the interior. There’s too much in the way of brittle plastics, so the ambience falls short of that beloved nearly-Rolls environment we so enjoy in an old XJ6. And the forcefed soundtrack that lifts the drone in Sport mode might irritate some.
This one was four-wheel-drive, though I never noticed – which is as it should be. Neither did I miss the lofty perch nor the rolly gait of an SUV, and kids, dogs, mud etc couldn’t faze it.