Jaguar wagons shelved

Fans of prestige station wagons, or estates as they're called in Europe, will be fishing in a much smaller pond as Jaguar looks set to kill off the XF wagon and most likely not bother with an XE wagon.

That's the word from Jaguar Land Rover's head of global PR, Richard Agnew, who told motoring.com.au that wagons were now "a massively difficult business case for us".

The advent of SUVs as the de rigueur load-luggers on today's roads – including Jag's first ever SUV, the just-launched F-PACE – has come at the expense of the humble estate.

"There's a handful of markets in Europe [that still buy wagons] -- the UK, Germany, Italy and historically Australia," said Agnew, referencing the local love for wagons from a couple decades ago.

"So as a global business case it's difficult to make sense of it, especially when the market is definitely moving to SUVs," he said, pouring cold water on the prospects of any new wagon model from the prestige British brand.

Roughly a year ago Jaguar confirmed the XF Sportbrake wagon would return, but that decision seems shaky as the F-PACE delivers Jaguar a record-setting pre-order volume of more than 8000 vehicles.

Asked point blank if Jaguar would rule out an estate version of the large XF or mid-size XE sedans, the senior Jaguar executive wasn't quite ready to wave the white flag.

"I wouldn't say 'rule out' but we're looking very carefully at them," he said.

"Five years ago it would have been a no-brainer. But now it's a closer call. Because of our size, we've still got that niche boutique feel. The downside of that is we haven’t got the resource or capability to do every model we want."

The svelte previous-generation XF Sportbrake estate was first shown in 2012 but has never been sold in Australia.