Jaguar's awesome new Station Wagon!!

Some mornings are better than others.  Today was a good morning - I got to sleep in, had a good breakfast and found out that Jaguar is making a new station wagon!  Since we all know I a love of awesome wagons, let's take a look at what Jag has to offer in this unduly unappreciated utility segment.
This new wagon, dubbed the XFR-S Sportbrake, looks beautiful.  To back the high performance good looks are specs that don't disappoint.  A supercharged 5.0L V8 puts out 550 horsepower and 501 foot pounds of torque all going to the rear wheels via a ZF eight speed automatic transmission.  The supercharger is sure to give this beast a nice broad torque curve which will be perfect for getting the kids to soccer practice on time (not to mention shredding tires on aggressive supermarket parking lot maneuvers).

Unfortunately, this great wagon comes at a great price (over $135,000).  But that doesn't really matter because unless you live in Europe you can't buy it anyway.  As per usual, I have been disappointed by savvy business people who don't want to spend tons of capital to market and prepare a vehicle no one will buy in North America.  You win again!

If we all remember though, the first Jaguar wagon wasn't anything to write home about.  I'm speaking of course about the poor, misunderstood X-Type Estate.  Although it never made it to the USA (as far as I know), it was sold in Canada. 

The X-type was developed when Jaguar was under Ford's ownership and was underpinned by the architecture used in the Ford Mondeo (and Ford Fusion, and Mazda6 and Lincoln MKZ...).  Being a front wheel drive platform, it didn't exude the typical Jaguar sport-luxury feel.  Also, the Ford folks marketed the X-Type as a BMW 3-Series fighter... which it had no hope at actually realizing since the Bimmer outclassed the X-Type in almost every possible measure of performance.  This is kind of a tragedy since the Mondeo platform was quite good when compared to other front wheel drive mid-sized sedans at the time.

As a result, most critics panned the X-Type and it's wagon derivative.  Strangely though, Jeremy Clarkson seemed to love it, as evidenced in the video below:

And on that Bombshell...

TTFN!