Following yesterday’s leak Jaguar has come up trumps with a series of images showing off its brand new XF Sportbrake, that’s station wagon to you and me. From the B-pillar back it’s all new metalwork. We like it. A lot.
The only drawback we can see from an aesthetic point of view are the ghastly Dame Edna Everage-like LED day time running lights. They’re part of the recent XF facelift. It’s true the pics supplied are all about showing the back of the car, but maybe Jaguar regrets the styling update too. Only one of the 14 pics supplied shows the front of the car.
Compared to the XF saloon Jaguar say the Sportbrake is 5mm longer and 70kg heavier. That’s not too bad really and they’re also at pains to point out the handling characteristics from the sedan have not been lost in translation to practical load lugger.
Maybe we’ve got this wrong, but looking at how steeply raked the rear boot lid is when open, we suspect there’ll be a few XF Sportbrake owners who quickly discover their garage isn’t tall enough to fully open the boot.
With the rear seats up there’s 550 litres of cargo space. Press the easy access remote button to lower the rear seats and the load area expands to 1675 litres. The Mercedes E Class has the XF Sportbrake comfortably covered with 1950 litres of space when the seats are down, but take one look at the E Class and you’ll quickly see there’s a market for the new Jag, even with its nasty LED eye liner.
