The Jaguar XF Sportbrake is a much talked about car in the Jaguar world, being as an estate version of the popular XF model wasn’t on the cards at all in the initial plan. Now, however, Jag have seemingly given in to the expanding Estate market’s pressures, and realised that to not provide such a car would be miss out on plenty of extra sales. So, along comes the XF Sportbrake – and now we’ve spotted it out and about in testing.

Front End

Now, this heavily camouflaged model is the 1st Prototype, and rumour has it that despite it being in the early stages this sportily designed car seems to be driving very well straight out of the box. If such positivity is being seen then it seems fair to assume that the final product will manage to have all the good bits of the saloon, just with the added benefit of all that rear space and consequent practicality. Some other rumours are gradually being confirmed – here at THE Blog About Cars we are pretty certain that the Sportbrake will feature the blacked out D pillars of the XJ, and that the rear lights will be in the same style as the saloon. Looks-wise it will definitely be sporty, although this does mean sacrificing some of the load capacity. Still, it ain’t trying to beat the E-Class in that area, so I doubt it’s really a focus.

That rear end again

Whilst we were eyeing up the shape and getting worked up about the final product, we noticed another thing – that camouflage at the back actually features a “Follow Us On Twitter” (@Sportbrake for those who care) call-to-action. Now, we’re used to seeing this on later prototypes (anyone remember the over-advertising of the Evoque’s social media credentials?!), but not this early on in the process. We’re speculating, completely, but this sort of instant publicity and early social media labelling suggests that JLR have lined this up as a seriously big player for the year to come.