On the inside, the XF gets a generous level of standard equipment, including heated mirrors, supportive seats and digital instruments. More widely, though, it may be less recognisable to you if you haven’t cast your eye over this car for a few years because Jaguar has made a big improvement to the perceived quality and classy material allure.
The tastefully dulled, subtly sculptural chrome trims immediately catch your eye, but when you explore the darker corners of the driving environment, you find matching perceived quality in other places too.
The various clusters of buttons and knobs, on the steering wheel and the centre console, are much more neatly presented and better finished than they used to be as well.
And remember that black rubberised look and feel that the car’s secondary switchgear used to have? It looked all right when brand new, but you’d have bet on it wearing badly. Well, that’s all long gone, replaced by chunky-feeling chrome window switches and illuminated toggle buttons on the steering wheel’s spokes.
The Pivi Pro infotainment screen, meanwhile – 11.4in on the diagonal and with a slightly convex display that makes it appear to hug the curve of the dashboard quite nicely – is also very attractive. It’s standard on even entry-level cars, as is Jaguar’s digital instrument pack, and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
And it’s easy to use, fully furnished for wireless device-mirroring compatibility, and both reliable and robust with its software. The line of shortcut buttons on the margin of the display and the easy configurability of the home screen to suit the functions you access most often are as key to this as the system’s responsiveness.
Seat comfort up front is very good. If you’re on the taller side, there’s a chance you might notice a slight shortage of adjustment range in the telescopic steering column, or the closeness of the car’s roofline. The XF never was the biggest or most accommodating of mid-sized executive options, but now that it’s priced more in line with rivals from the class below, that’s much less likely to bother you.
Boot space for the saloon stands at 459 litres with the rear seats upright, which can’t match the likes of the BMW 5 Series (520 litres) or Mercedes E-Class (540 litres), or even that of cars in the class below, including the BMW 3 Series (480 litres) and Audi A4 (480 litres). Folded flat, the XF’s boot grows to 1484 litres.
