Jaguar XF 2.0-litre petrol review, test drive

Jaguar XF 2.0 petrol sedan is the carmaker's most affordable petrol car here. We get behind the wheel to see whether the Jag experience is intact.

Published on Apr 10, 2014 07:52:00 PM

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Jaguar XF 2.0-litre petrol.

In fact, since the interior is quite identical to the top-spec car, the chauffer driven won’t really be able to tell the difference at all. However, unlike your chauffer’s comfy front seat, the XF’s rear bench isn’t as cosy. Yes, while there’s more than adequate knee room, the smallish seat squabs lack the kind of under thigh support found in luxury sedans like the Mercedes-Benz E-class.

So, while this new variant retains its aesthetic and luxurious bits, what is this 2.0-litre petrol engine like from behind the wheel? Simply put, this four-pot isn’t as charismatic as the larger sixes and V8s but from a practical standpoint, it’s more than adequate. Leave it in ‘D’ and the XF does just fine, upshifting early and ambling around at low revs. However, the power delivery is a tad spikey and if you nail the accelerator, the gearbox shifts down, at times up to four ratios, swiftly propelling you forward and may catch you a bit off-guard in slow moving traffic. Twist the gear-selector to ‘S’ and the response improves significantly, making it a lot easier to dart into vanishing gaps. For its lack of displacement, it’s a reasonably quick car too. Flat-out, 100kph comes up in 8.65 seconds and the motor packs enough oomph to comfortably breach 180kph. If you choose to manually cycle through the eight-speed, the steering-mounted paddle shifters are quite quick to react to inputs and deliver as expected.