Jaguar XF to get 2.2 Diesel: Did Jaguar tell us Porkies?!

The Jaguar XF 2.2 Diesel Spy Photo

Jaguar has denied planning to put the 2.2 litre diesel engine from the Freelander in to the Jaguar XF. But are they being a bit ‘Economical with the actualité?’

Back in April – and not for the first time – rumours began to circulate that Jaguar were planning on dropping the 2.2 litre diesel used in the Freelander in to the Jaguar XF. Which did make sense. And the source for the rumour this time round was Top Gear, who we’d expect to have pretty sound sources before they spout speculation.

But we could see the other side of this argument too. Much as we could see a smaller oil burner being a big success for Jaguar, we could also see that there was a danger of Jaguar looking like they were going downmarket just when the world had finally decided they were anything but.

So we asked Jaguar straight, and they said “…speculation I’m afraid. No plans to announce a new engine in XF”. Which, being the trusting little souls we are, we took as a denial. But now we’re not so sure.

Autoblog in Holland recently published a spy photo of what they reasonably believed to be a facelift for the XF, complete with the usual B&W patterned camouflage. Nothing massively suspicious about that, but Auotoblog thought they’d do a registration check.

What came back was a Jaguar XF registered with a 2.2 diesel. No doubt the 2.2 diesel in one of the two states of tune Land Rover now offers – 148bhp and 187bhp – in the 2011 Freelander 2, suitably fettled for Jaguar sensibilities and dynamics.

So I think we’re decided that Jaguar were obfuscating when we asked them about this back in April. Disingenuous is probably too strong, as semantically they were probably correct; in April they had no plans to announce a new engine for the XF in place. But it would seem they were perhaps being ‘Economical with the actualité’.

We’ve dropped an email to Jaguar on this (not really fair to phone on a Sunday evening), and as soon as we get a response we’ll update here.

In the meantime, perhaps we should invest in a big pot of Maldon’s finest to sprinkle on Jaguar’s future responses?

Update: To Jaguar’s credit, they responded to our email last night (even though it was Sunday) with what is their standard response to queries about future models. They said “We don’t comment on speculation about potential future product…!”.

But I think we’ll take the three full stops and exclamation mark at the end of the official rebuttal – which isn’t normal – as proof positive that the story is correct…!