The New Jaguar XF is here and it's rather splendid

I bet the Jaguar execs breathed a sigh of relief when the high wire stunt used to reveal the new XF went without a hitch yesterday. Thankfully for the rest of us it was good news too, with no shiny new XF's harmed in the making we can all be treated to the beautiful lines of Jags new medium sized saloon, lets take a closer look.

Distinctly Jaguar 

More design evolution instead of complete reworking, the XF is still distinctly a Jaguar, good, as this means it's unlikely to be confused with German rivals. It also means that picking the Jag remains the thinking mans choice, it shows that one dares to be different and there's nothing wrong with that. But with Jag lately playing on the idea their cars are the villains choice, does the XF make the grade? Well for starters that big grille with new, less rounded LED headlights either side certainly makes the Jag look angry. It flows into a long bonnet with adequate power bulge before the line flows over the car and down to quite a short rear, it truly is a gorgeous car and if you don't think so, there's clearly something wrong with you! On the white car pictured, an XFS there's also some suitably aggressive air intakes on the front bumper and some wonderfully spokey wheels. I should also point out those beautiful new panels are also light weight, the whole XF architecture utilises aluminium to make sure the Jag is one off the lightest cars in it's class. It's a slippery bugger too with a drag coefficient of just 0.26, an Aston Martin DBS is a brick in comparison, managing only 0.35, come on Bond, the baddies car cuts through the air better than yours!

New features

Look closely and the car clearly takes ques from some of its smaller siblings too, those rear lights for example, total F-Type while the whole silhouette is very much an enlarged XE, or should the XE be a shrunken XF? It doesn't really matter, both cars look superb. Inside things have changed too, there is a new 10.2 inch touchscreen for the infotainment system and instead of traditional dials drivers get a fully configurable 12.3 TFT instrument cluster. A 17 speaker Meridian surround sound system can also be spec'd, just in case you want to blow your ear drums out.

Wonderfully Evil

Full details of the new XF will be revealed at the New York Auto Show on April 1st. Meaning for now just sit back and enjoy the pictures. Perhaps while stroking a white cat and smirking because the Jag is still very much a villains car and it's all the better for it. Australian release is scheduled for the first quarter of 2016 with pricing to be announced closer to the time.