Jaguar XF Sportbrake 2017 first drive

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 wrap-around 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 loadspaces in its class. 

Inevitably, this all comes at a cost. To you, the buying public, it’ll be a premium of around £2500 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 of surplus bulk.

This slightly unwieldy fact does the latest 237bhp 2.0-litre diesel Ingenium unit no favours at all. Jaguar claims 6.4sec for the AWD version’s 0-60mph 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.