Close Enough
by David Finlay (15 Jul 08)

A bloke who lives near me says he thinks that the XF looks Korean. I know, I found that a bit odd too. I must see if I can arrange a meeting between this guy and Jaguar designer Ian Callum, because Callum, though a genial soul, is always up for a bit of robust verbal jousting over a dinner table, and I'd just love to hear his reaction to that comment.

You may think that I've mentioned this simply because I can't think of a better opening paragraph, but there's more to the scheme than that. In one respect the XF does actually strike me as having something Korean about it, and not in a good way.

But there are more important matters to deal with before we get to that one. First of all, there are four engines to choose from, and undoubtedly they will all find buyers, but the chances of any of them other than the 2.7-litre turbo diesel as tested here being the top seller are so small as to be not worth considering. Why, realistically, would you buy any other XF?

Well, I can see why you might prefer the 4.2-litre supercharged SV8 (see road test). Wonderful car, but it costs nearly £20,000 more than the diesel, it uses nearly twice as much fuel on the combined cycle (and probably more in real life) and, delightful though it is, I think I would tire of it more quickly than of the diesel.

The non-supercharged 4.2 V8 is my least favourite of the three XFs I've driven so far, and although there's a much more sensible three-litre petrol option, which for all I know may be very nice indeed, it has exactly the same list price as the diesel and will be much more expensive to run on account of being 40% thirstier.

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