Its Geneva auto show debut is a week away, but Jaguar’s XF Sportbrake—that’s Coventry-ese for wagon—has been revealed in a brochure scan posted on an Italian blog. (This comes after the English company had itself supplied “spy” photos a few months ago.)
Jaguar boss Adrian Hallmark is looking to move the company from niche player to mainstream contender, and this model will play a critical role for Jaguar in Europe, where a huge percentage of vehicles in the XF’s class are sold as wagons. (In some countries, wagons even outsell their sedan counterparts.) Without so much as seeing the real thing, much less driving it, we can confidently state that the XF Sportbrake will be leagues better than Jaguar’s last wagon effort, the X-type. That’s because the XF sedan is an excellent car, where the X-type sedan and wagon were made mostly of disappointment and class-below Ford Mondeo bits.
We expect the engines to include four- and six-cylinder diesels. An all-new gasoline V-6, derived from the company’s V-8, also has a good chance of being offered. Whether V-8 versions make the cut, we don’t know. You are free to salivate at the prospect of an XFR Sportbrake with Jaguar’s 510-hp supercharged V-8, or a 550-horse version that uses the XKR-S‘s engine. All-wheel drive could show up in the next few years, as it will be introduced for the XF and XJ sedans.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that any version of the XF Sportbrake will be sold in the U.S. Evaporating wagon sales have led BMW and Audi to kill the wagon versions of the 5-series and A6 in the States, while the A4 wagon has been recast as the almost-crossover A4 Allroad.
Official photos and info of the XF Sportbrake should be available very soon.
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