Road Test: Jaguar XF Sportbrake 2.2d SE

Price as tested: €47,000 (approx)

+ Utterly gorgeous, terrific handling and ride, spacious, practical, agile
– 2.2 needs to be revved hard to work best, brakes could do with more bite
= Easily the equal of 520d or A6, and more characterful than either


Jaguar, it may surprise you to learn, is no stranger to the big-booted format. It has dabbled in estates before.

There was the late, unlamented X-Type estate, which was the designer Ian Callum’s first work for Jaguar. Since then Callum’s Jag portfolio has expanded prodigiously, taking Jaguar out of its 1960s-style design straitjacket and into the realm of the modern, clean cut and ruthlessly contemporary.

It was the 2008 XF that broke the Jag mould and its updated 2011 version that returned Jaguar to the design winners’ circle. So grafting an estate body on to the XF had to be done with the utmost care, preserving the beauty of line while still creating a practical, usable loadspace beneath.

Job done. The XF Sportbrake is possibly even better looking than the standard four-door, and it is certainly less boxy-looking than the rival BMW 5 Series Touring or Audi A6 Avant. In fact the Jag’s only real rival in the handsome- estate department is the new Mercedes-Benz CLS Shooting Brake, a car that will cost the better part of €30,000 more.

Underneath the swoopy rear tailgate (which raises and lowers electrically on all but the base model) is a square-sided, flat-floored 550-litre boot that matches its German rivals (except for the gargantuan Mercedes E-Class estate’s) for space and is trimmed with sumptuous carpet and shiny aluminium load rails. The entire structure aft of the front doors is all new, with more headroom for rear-seat passengers (alas, not with a commensurate increase in legroom) and darkened privacy glass if you fancy it.

Up front little appears to have changed, but Jaguar has been carefully tweaking the XF’s cabin to keep it ahead of the game. Revised dials, comfier seats and some switchgear updates keep the XF’s cabin feeling fresh. Plump for swanky Portfolio trim and the suede headlining feels so good it’s almost naughty.

So far the Sportbrake is available in Europe only with diesel engines; the updated 2.2-litre four-cylinder engine is the key one for the Irish market. Crucially, its emissions have dropped from 149g/km to 135g/km, so the XF now drops a tax band, to band B2.

We tested the 197bhp version (a 162bhp version, with the same emissions figure, is also available), and, although it occasionally struggles with the XF’s weight, it is mostly well suited to the car, revving smoothly and quietly. It’s not as economical as Jaguar claims, though, with low-40s mpg being more realistic than the claimed 55mpg. It could also do with sharper brakes; the bite point is just slightly too far down the pedal for comfort. Thankfully, that wasn’t an issue on the 3-litre V6 diesel S that we also sampled.

Comfort, in another sense, is very much a priority. The 2008 XF was often criticised for its too-firm ride. Jaguar has since honed it, and the Sportbrake’s standard-fit self-levelling rear air suspension makes it a paragon of bump-absorbing refinement.

The BMW, Mercedes and Audi rivals all beat the Jaguar for cabin space, but the Sportbrake is such a delight to drive, and so handsome with it, that we cannot see it as anything short of the best in the class.

Facts & Figures


Jaguar XF Sportbrake 2.2d SE

Price as tested: €47,000 (approx)

Range price: €TBA

Capacity: 2,279cc

Power: 197bhp

Torque: 400Nm

Top speed: 200kmh

0-100kmh: 10.9sec

Economy: 5.1l-100km (55mpg)

CO2 emissions: 135g/km

VRT Band: B2. €280 road tax

Euro NCAP rating: Not yet tested

Features: The man who puts the Jaaaaag in Jaguar

This is the man who finally got Jaguar design right, after it had languised for years, unable to break away from a slavish devotion to a classic sixties look that just didn’t work in a modern context. Ian Callum is an astonishingly talented man, with stints at Aston Martin and Ford behind him, he swept away the retro look at Jaguar and ushered in a clean, modern style, beginning with the XK and XF and onto the sometimes controversial XJ. But was that binning of retro the key to Jaguar’s recent renaissance?


“Well, it depends what you mean by retro. I think if it means deliberately copying the past in order to try and capture something from that past, it’s the wrong thing to do. I’m afraid Jaguar had fallen into that trap, a little bit. Not overtly, or even consciously, but just by not moving on quickly enough. From my point of view, it didn’t work very well."

The 2008 XF was the final nail in the coffin that Callum had prepared for Jaguar’s dark days of producing photocopies of the 1968 XJ. Out wen the sixties, in came the 21st century with a car of near perfect proportions and gorgeous detailing. Even without the retro style of the old XJ and S-Type, there was no mistaking the XF for anything other than a Jaguar. But now Callum has another tough assignment on his hands. Styling never stands still and Jaguar has to move on again. Where now?

“I’m going through that very issue at the moment, with the design team, how we go about moving on, having established the foundations. I think the key to this is not copying the past, but what we’ve tried to do with the current lineup of cars is understand the values of what Jaguar stood for in the fifties and sixties, and that’s certainly when I admired them the most, and pin down these values about modernity, about beauty of line, about purity of surface. We’ll continue with those same values; we haven’t changed those, but very much in a 21st century way. I think that this is where we wanted to get to with XF and XJ.

“Where we go to now is probably a continuation of that, we’ve made a big leap into the future, we’re now in the right place, and I think the challenge is now to move on from that in a very positive and hopefully very successful way. It’s very difficult to know how much further to take it. As a designer I perhaps always want to take it a little further than other people feel comfortable with. But we need to find that balance.”

A big move, recently, was the launch of the high performance XKR-S model, which delved into Porsche 911 GT3 territory, with an in-your-face bodykit and aerodynamic performance given preference over Jag’s traditonal GT comfort.

“I have to admit that that car is quite aggressive, although I like to use the word ‘assertive’ more. That car is overt, because it has been designed in the wind tunnel, all these appendages you see are there for a very good reason. It’s to keep the car on the road at 300kmh. Therefore they have a function and so I’m very comfortable with they way they’ve evolved. We wouldn’t do that on a less powerful car,  but you’ll certainly see our cars becoming more assertive, and the simple reason for that is that the visual geography out there in the car world is very aggressive. If you go to America, people out there drive around in great big pickups and you need your cars to have a presence on the road and I think the idea of the cars becoming more subdued and a little more gentle in their attitude and their presence are probably over.”

Certainly, Callum’s latest creation, the F-Type, as fully revealed this week at the Paris Motor Show, follows these cues. Classically Jaguar proportions (long bonnet, short rear) but with aggressive (sorry, assertive) details like the deep side vents and the gaping grille. It’s a looker, that’s for sure.

“Even if a car is fairly ordinary, they need to shout a bit louder these days, and Jaguars certainly will be shouting.”