Ian Callum, Jaguar’s design chief, is one of our favorite car designers working today, but he’s just broken our hearts. He’s let slip that Jaguar will abandon station wagons in favor of crossovers like the new F-Pace. Yes, that means there will never be another vehicle like the XFR-S Sportbrake, shown above.
Callum broke the sad news at an event for the F-Pace, according to an Automotive News Europe report. Like us, Callum is a confirmed wagon fan, so he’s sad for the wagon’s demise: “The [wagon] market is massively shrinking. I’m very sad about it, but it’s a very difficult market to justify,” said Callum, per Automotive News. “The world’s biggest wagon market is Germany. And what do Germans buy? They buy German cars.”
This is a perfectly logical thing to say, and Jaguar is perfectly logical to make product-planning decisions that are good for its business. Still, we can’t help but imagine how great it would be if Jaguar made a Sportbrake version of the downright lovely XE sports sedan. Currently, wagons only sell in significant numbers in Europe, and even there, SUVs are quickly becoming the family transportation device of choice. Jaguar, then, is smart to focus on the F-Pace and potentially other SUVs, rather than sticking with a dying trend. At least we know Volvo is committed to building more new wagons.
This story originally appeared on Road & Track.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1MFTf20
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment