Jaguar XF Diesel S (2010) Review & Road Test part 2

Jaguar XF Diesel S Review – a really very nice interior

In part 2 of our review and road test of the Jaguar XF Diesel S we find out if the XF S can hold a candle to the more powerful XFR.

What you get with the XF Diesel S is a car that is so close to the XFR in the way it handles and performs it’s hard to believe you’re ploughing along in a 3.0 litre diesel. The wall of torque the Diesel S produces certainly helps – it’s within a whisker of the torque the 5.0 litre XFR delivers – and for much of the time the XF Diesel S manages to do a very credible impersonation of its petrol-engined sibling.

True, you don’t get all the XFR’s goodies bolted to the XF Diesel S even after you’ve dished up £3k+ to grab the two sporty packages. Powering out of bends on quick country roads you may just miss the XFR’s trick diff – even more so if you’ve dialled-down or turned off the traction control – and the springs and shocks are a bit softer.

But for 95% of the time you get what is in effect an XFR powered by the fuel of Satan. You get the same clever adaptive dampers as the XFR which make the XF Diesel S waft along with the best of the rest of the competition but without having to flick around to find a setting that works.

And still without anything other than a prod of the right foot and a swift turn-in you can get back from this executive express the sort of seat-of-the-pants driveability and response you simply have no right to expect.

Just as with the XFR, the 20″ wheels on the XF Diesel S seem to have little or no effect on ride quality, with the vast majority of crappy B road surfaces dealt with serenely. Select Dynamic mode on those crappy B roads and you’ll find that the XF Diesel S really can play the swift sport saloon with immense alacrity.

Use the paddle-shifts to change up just as the rev counter hits the red line and you’ll rarely feel that diesel ‘Out-of-Breath’ you usually get when hustling along an oil burner. You really will be hard pushed to discern that this is a diesel as you make proper progress and get that delicious ‘donk’ up your spine as you power on with each new gear.

“You really will be hard pushed to discern that this is a diesel as you make proper progress and get that delicious ‘donk’ up your spine as you power on with each new gear.”

The ability of the XF S to play at properly swift exec-express does mean you’ll never get the headline 42mpg as long as you succumb to its temptations. But even when you hustle it hard you’ll still see the right side of 30mpg, as you will even when you only drive around town in the point and squirt, stop-start melee that passes for urban traffic.

Take the XF S on a longer haul – even a brisk longer haul – and you will struggle to get less than 40mpg out of it. Even when you’re cruising for hours at 80mph+.

All of which starts to make the Jaguar XF Diesel S very close to perfection, especially if you’re using your own money to buy it. No, it’s not quite an XFR, but it does come so close for so much of the time there is no easy way to justify not just the extra cost of the XFR – an extra £16k – but also the real-world cost of fuel, which will be almost twice as much in the XFR.

If ever there were a motoring equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, this is it.