AWD luxury car Reviews

Indeed, it is the very rapidity of the changes that are possible in the consumer electronics world that are now so flummoxing automotive engineers. Thanks to those redefined customer expectations, what was once a spectacularly quick four-year turnaround in new model introductions (platform change in industry parlance) is now a what-the-h-e-double-hockey-sticks-took-you-so-long wait, even though the four-year span required for the total re-engineering steel and rubber still seems, by historic standards, incredibly rapid.

Thus, does a car like Jaguar’s XF mid-sized saloon, much feted as a stylistic and engineering breakthrough for the Coventry-based company since it was face-lifted three short years ago, now seems a little, well, wrinkled around the eyebrows, lines now showing that require the automotive equivalent of Botox to revitalize the youthful image that sells.

Like most aspects of aging, the first signs are unseen, in the XF’s case it’s that with the much-missed XK becoming extinct and the entry-level XE tantalizingly close to delivery, by the end of the year, the XF will be the only car out of four sold in Jaguar dealerships not made of aluminum. Yup, while Ford makes much of its lighter-than-steel F-150 and Audi drags its heels despite being the first mainstream manufacturer with an aluminized unibody, most of Jaguar Land Rover’s products are built on a platform of aluminum (including the top-of-the-line Range Rover and Range Rover Sports).

This then makes the XF 3.0L AWD an anomaly in the automotive world, the only mid-sized sedan in the world that weighs more (1, 880 kilograms versus the short wheelbase XJ’s 1, 871 kilos for the equivalent 3.0L AWD model) than the full-boat luxury sled atop the pyramid. And, thanks to governmental mandates for increased fuel economy, lightness is now right next to Godliness.

That’s not to say that the XF has been left to wither. Indeed, numerous have been the upgrades since its 2009 introduction, the most significant being the addition of a 2.0-litre turbocharged four (to better compete with the like of Audi’s A6) and, most important to a wintery Canada, a new all-wheel-drive system.

Although it’s easy to dismiss all AWD systems as the same, there really is something “Instinctive” about Jaguar’s implementation. Rather than the 50/50 to 60/40 rear/front torque splits common to its German competition, the XF sends a great preponderance (over 75 %) of its torque to the rear wheels until it detects slip, the goal being to emulate traditional rear-wheel-drive handling as much as possible. Only when slip is detected or anticipated (hence that Instinctive moniker) by the onboard computer does the XF sedan send as much as 50% of the engine’s torque to the front wheels.

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving

• 2015 Jaguar XF 3.0 AWD Luxury

  PHOTO:, Driving