2012 Jaguar XF: What's It Like to Live With?
Read the latest updates in our long-term road test of the 2012 Jaguar XF as our editors live with this car for a year.
What do you want to know about?
- Introduction
- The Cleanest of Gauges
- Jag Earns 2nd Place in JD Power IQS Awards
- Starting
- First 1,000 Miles
- Wiper Action
- The $2300 Guaranteed Parking Ticket Option * UPDATED
- It Has a Pulse
- Leaping In
- Oooh, Buttons
- Hill? What Hill?
- A Look Underneath
- The Secret to a Good Road Trip
- Truth or Consequences
- The Secret of Power
- Can I just Get a Dipstick?
- First Service — A Bit Early
- No Rockfords Allowed
- Track Tested: 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged vs 2011 BMW 550i
- Grumpy Face
- Sleek Center Console
- Just the Right Size
- Effortless Power
- Feel The Pain
- Simple Cruise
- Backup Camera
- Donkeywork
- Chauffeur Duty
- Kinda Stinky
- Evening Under the Stars
- DSC Off
- Going Strong
- Lovin' The Seats
- Feel the Difference
- Gear Indicator
- Will The Motorcycle Tires Fit?
- Zero Range?
- Beautiful Ugly Engine
- Button Up
- Thigh Support
- Jaguar Has APEAL
- 2013 XF Pricing Announced
- A Closer Look at Interior Materials
- Refined Door Bin
- Looking Back
- Driving with Idiots
- AWD, New Engines Untap Potential
- Patriotic Color Scheme
- TO ALASKA!
- You Write the Caption
- Our Favorite Caption
- Just a Four-door Camaro, Really
- The Leaper and the Growler
- Alaska Road Trip: The Plan
- Alaska Road Trip: Getting Started
- Alaska Road Trip: Hottest Place on Earth
- Alaska Road Trip: Highway Miles
- Alaska Road Trip: Tricky Tank
- Alaska Road Trip: 5,000 Milestone
- Alaska Road Trip: Idaho
- Alaska Road Trip: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
- Alaska Road Trip: Lame Headlights
- Alaska Road Trip: The Alaska Highway
- Alaska Road Trip: Winter Temps, Summer Tires
- Alaska Road Trip: Destination Reached
- Alaska Road Trip: Electronic Oil Meters are Dumb
- Alaska Road Trip: The Road Less Traveled
- Alaska Road Trip: 10,000 Milestone
- Tepid Seat Coolers
- Alaska Road Trip: 7,492 Miles Later...
- Alaska Road Trip Last Stop: Service
- The Hell of It
- Electro Leaper
- Bluetooth is a Bully
- Thigh Extenders, Yay
- The Right Amount of Control
- Obey Me
- MPG Notes
- No Means No
- Leaping Lizards
- 2013 Jaguar XF Supercharged: Go Big or Go Home
- Least They Remember the Car
- Recirculation x 3
- Feeding an Unhealthy Obsession
- 10 Things I Like About You
- Fuel Tank Recall
- Restrained Urgency
- Buried Settings
- We're Wimps
- Alaska Road Trip: The Whole Story and Mega Gallery
- The Perfect Bond Weekend Car
- Will the Soup Fit?
- Sleeper Cat
- We're Part of the Recall
- Makes The Case For Knobs
- What I'd Order
- Dynamic Mode Stays On
- Flat Tire Blues
- Door Ding #1
- Knurly Knobs
- Holy Hot Hands
- Glare
- Switchless Dome Lights Video
- Hold The Button
- More Button Holding With Video
- XFR-S Launch Film
- Rainy Days
- 15,000 Miles in Six Months
- European Crash Test Video
- Odds and Evens
- Reliability So Far
- Should You Get The Supercharged V8?
- Identifiable Styling
- Should You Get All-Wheel Drive?
- Thoughts On The Transmission's Sport Mode
- Sport Mode Done Right
- MPG Update for December
- Small Trunk Opening
- Creaky Sunroof
- Whoa, I Guess It Will Fit
- No Gangsta Lean
- Will the Stroller Fit?
- Dog Report
- Drives Like a Dream
- Autolamp Delay
- Drives Like a Smaller Car from an Earlier Time
- Fuel Economy Update for January
- Folding Rear Seat, An Option Unchecked
- Apparently, I'm Getting Old
- Open Air
- Uneven Interior Lighting
- Locked Fuel Door
- Always Ready for Action
- AZ Road Trip
- Packed and Powering to AZ
- Subtle Design Statement
- Valet Tales
- Navigation Hiccups
- Road Trip Worthy
- In Six Seconds
- Fuel Economy Update for February
- Digital Speedometer
- Time Check
- Daylight Savings Time
- Durable Interior
- Kumbaya! XF 2.0 Spotted In The Wild
- Cupholders Done Right
- Split-Zone Heated Seats
- Still Great With Half the Cylinders
- Noisy Volume
- Dirty Boot
- Fuel Economy Update for March
- Extravagant
- Better Boot
- XF or 911?
- Vanity Plates
- Last Man Standing
- A Certain Je Ne Sais Quois
- Fuel Economy Update for April
- The XF-Wing
- At the Ballet
- It's Like a Corvette
- Favorite Trip Computer Display
- Great Steering Wheel
- 10 Reasons I'll Miss It
- Comfortable Anywhere
- A Few Creaks
- Fuel Economy Update for May
- Rear Brake Pad Replacement
- Dead Front Tires
- Functional Louvers
- Visibility Matters
- Fuel Economy Update For June
- Wrap-Up
Introduction
Nobody notices our new long-term 2012 Jaguar XF as it slides through traffic. So we put it in Dynamic mode, double-tap the downshift paddle and make the exhaust crack and pop like a hunk of hot iron dipped into a bucket of water. Still, nobody notices, or at least they don't think it's our black Jaguar sedan. We rev the 5.0-liter supercharged V8 at a stoplight to hear the growl ricochet off the retaining walls and though the car visibly shakes like an old hot rod each time the V8 settles back into its engine mounts, nobody suspects the sedate British four-door.
That is, of course, until we drop the hammer. Our new Jag XF Supercharged lights the tires, paints some fresh lines on the road and slinks off into the night. Anyone who saw it probably thought the entire show was out of character and a bit crude, as if Colin Firth were to punch the Queen.
But why the surprise? Our XF has a supercharged V8, yet when sport sedans get talked about it's always BMW-this and Audi-that. Why does everyone forget about the more than capable Jaguar XF?
What We Got
The 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged is only one model removed from being the top-of-the-line XF and as such, it carries a price to match ($68,975) and a long list of standard features. First and foremost is the 32-valve, 470-horsepower 5.0-liter supercharged V8 engine that powers the rear wheels. This engine was added a year into the XF's production.
When it debuted in 2009, the Jag had a 4.2-liter V8 that produced a mere 420 hp and 413 pound-feet of torque. It was still good for zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds (5.0 with 1 foot of rollout) and a quarter-mile time of 13.6 seconds at 104.6 mph. Not bad, but we're not going to say we don't appreciate this new motor with more displacement and more top-end pull. Jag says this one should do zero to 60 in under 5. We'll see once we're out of break-in miles. The only transmission option is a six-speed shiftable automatic.
While Jags have always had competent power plants, they're also known for having well-appointed interiors and this one is no different. Rear parking sensors are standard, as are a sunroof, Bluetooth, navigation, iPod interface, self-leveling xenon HID headlamps, LED taillights, rain-sensing wipers, keyless entry and start, dual-zone climate control, tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel, soft grain leather with contrast stitching, heated and cooled seats, a 600-watt stereo, 7-inch color touchscreen with Media Hub with Interactive Voice and probably much more.
As if that wasn't enough, our tester is equipped with the piano-black interior option that removes the old-school wood look and replaces it with something slick and modern. That's $790. To continue that modern, sleek look, we've got the Jet Headliner option for $525. The Interior pack costs $1,300 and adds soft leather seats (18-way adjustable for the driver, 14 for the passenger) and bright pedals. Adaptive headlights were $850.
These options tip the scales over the $70,000 mark and give us an as-tested price of $72,440. A big chunk of change even if Jaguar is providing the vehicle on loan.
Why We Got It
The XF was an often-mentioned sedan whenever we asked for input on which car we should get next. It's also an overlooked player in the midsize luxury sedan segment, and recent upgrades make it more competitive than ever.
There's also the reliability factor to consider. Jaguar has been trying to get over its reputation for poor quality for decades now, so this should be a good test to see if any of that reputation is still deserved.
The 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged is perhaps the most handsome car we've ever had in our fleet thanks in part to a midcycle face-lift it got this year. On the outside, the Jag gets a new hood (with sweet "Supercharged" script), new grille and front airdam and XJ-style headlights. Inside, we're looking at new seats and a new navigation system we've previously dealt with in the Jaguar XJ.
Is a new look enough to get the 2012 Jaguar XF back on the radar of the sport-sedan enthusiast? To get people to notice the 470-hp stunner as a legitimate player in the game? To stand out in this hyper-competitive market that straddles the line between iron fist and velvet glove?
Or maybe we're missing the point. Maybe flying under the radar is part of the experience. We've got 12 months to put 20,000 miles on our new XF. Is it everything it's cracked up to be on paper and in photographs, or is it still just a quirky British import for tweed-wearing tea drinkers? Follow along on our Long-Term Road Test blog.
Current Odometer: 802
Best Fuel Economy: 14
Worst Fuel Economy: 9
Average Fuel Economy (over the life of the vehicle): 10.9
The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.
Before I get to how this 470 horsepower sedan drives, I feel the need to address the instrument cluster. Specifically it's lack of needless complexity. This is how it used to be done before designers and engineers tried to cram every last piece of vehicle information into a limited amount of space in the driver's field of view.
Granted, that small screen in the middle lights up with all sorts of user adjustable information, but it's pretty minimal as modern instrument panels go.
As for how it drives, this XF is what some in the business call "well integrated." In other words, everything works together well. The throttle calibration, the steering effort, the suspension tuning, the brake feel — they're all on the same page. The result is a car that feels responsive, predictable and just plain easy to drive. And yes, it's fast, real fast.
Jaguar is celebrating today's 2012 JD Power Initial Quality Survey results, having earned 2nd place, in a tie with Porsche, for the least amount of problems per 100 vehicles during a 90-day period. Jaguar was also the most-improved brand in the survey.
Lexus was the highest-ranking nameplate in the latest survey, averaging 73 problems per 100 vehicles. Jaguar and Porsche had 75 problems each, followed by Cadillac (80) and Honda (83).
Power's IQS study identifies problems experienced by owners in two categories: design-related problems and engineering- and manufacturing-related defects and malfunctions. The market-research firm says its survey of initial quality has been an early indicator of long-term vehicle durability.
I'll do my part in helping Jag celebrate, by taking the long-way home in our long-term XF.
Our supercharged Jaguar XF has some interesting moves. When you press the start button, the shifter knob elevates and the vents flip open.
Watch this video...
Our long-term Jaguar XF has just passed the 1,000-mile mark. Now that we've had time to familiarize ourselves with its many features, question is, what would you like to know?
Here is a short video to show you how the windshield wipers work in the 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged. The water comes out of the blade arms. I pushed the button twice to wash and then let go so you can see how it functions:
Digging around in the trunk of our new XF, I came across the front license plate holder which was imprinted with this curious warning. With ACC being short for Adaptive Cruise Control, the warning would infer that you can't run a front plate if you purchase the $2300 option. To make sure, I held the plate holder over the front bumper and sure enough, it would block off a good portion of the lower grille - right where the adaptive cruise control's sensor thingy would reside. Oh, in case you didn't know,
driving
parking without a front license plate in California is illegal.
I've heard of paying for the privilege before, but really.
* Thanks to reader phennighausen, we're able to see the instructions that Jaguar has sent to dealership on the correct installation of the number plate and it's plinth (plate holder). If you do purchase an XF, make sure your plate holder has been installed correctly or the trick ACC system won't work correctly.
You should always check and double check your new car for every installed option - even for floor mats you've paid for (ask me how I know) before driving off the lot.
click through for the instructions supplied by Jaguar
goaterguy asked if the start button lights up in a heart beating pattern before starting.
Yes, it does. Here is a short video (this time with the windows closed):
This car is special and it makes me feel special, too. With the influx of new cars into our long-term fleet, it's a great time to have access to the lot.
I took the XF to a fancy-schmancy lunch in Malibu in the afternoon, then out to a fancy-schmancy dinner in my neighborhood last night. The Jaguar is exquisite from the inside, with rich leather and an intoxicating blend of stately design and high-tech styling. Honestly, the only thing I'm not a fan of is the steering wheel shape.
From the outside, the muscular shape and jet-black paint manage to turn plenty of heads; way more than I had anticipated.
Then there's the engine. Oh. My. Gawd.
It feels like it's got more than 424 lb-ft of twist. When you stomp the throttle, it responds with a flood of power that presses you into the seat. It doesn't shove you violently, no, it's a smooth and graceful wallop that doesn't jostle your innards. Fan-freaking-tastic.
Out of curiosity, I engaged the sport modes. On downshifts, there's a glorious snarl and a series of exhaust crackles. Those turned even more heads in Beverly Hills.
Here's the kicker: the Jaaaaag is almost $30,000 less than our long-term Audi A8. THIRTY-GRAND! I like our Audi, but I love our Jag. *Gasp* this isn't even a fair fight.
So what does all this stuff do?
Top left button with the snowflake: Winter Mode
Press this button when driving in slippery low-grip conditions. Winter mode selects 2nd gear when driving away on level ground. According to Jaguar, the car performs "in a more gentle and controlled manner to avoid skidding." Sounds elegant, doesn't it? This mode does not shut off when you switch off the car. You have to turn winter mode off manually.
Top right button: Dynamic Stability Control Off
Jaguar allows the driver to switch between DSC and TracDSC, which is an alternate setting of DSC that allows for more traction but less stability. It is intended only for use by experienced drivers on dry tarmac. You can also turn off all stability controls. If you do that, or if the DSC needs maintenance, this light will switch on.
Lower left button with checkered flag: Dynamic Mode
This should be called "fun mode." It sets the car's control systems for high-performance driving. Jaguar says that Dynamic Mode enhances key systems "so that the vehicle's full potential can be exploited." This mode allows the most driver control. When you select Sport mode and Dynamic Mode, you have full shifting control. The transmission will not upshift even when the rev limit is reached. This mode remains active six hours after you switch off the car. So, if you're just making a quick stop, you don't have to reset it. But when you leave the car off longer, you have to start over.
Lower right button: Automatic Speed Limiter
ASL allows you to set a speed limit using the cruise controls. This button allows you to go back and forth between ASL and cruise control. It's mainly used for controlling speeds on downhill runs when engine braking is not enough.
Now, time to "exploit" our Supercharged Jaguar XF? Jag's word, not mine.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, my favorite market is up a steep hill. It gives me a chance to compare how our long-term cars handle the climb.
This weekend, the Jag and I set off to buy mussels and an organic chicken. Our Jaguar XF didn't even notice it was on a hill. It flew past all the other cars without hesitation or struggle of any kind. 470 horsepower, 424 lb-ft of torque and a supercharger. Yeah, that'll do it.
On a related note, the fuel economy on this car is pretty drastic: 12 mpg overall average so far. The EPA estimates 15 city, 21 highway and 17 combined. Not very optimistic and not likely to be earned by us any time soon.
Our 2-post Rotary Lift is working overtime this week. We've only had our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged for about a month, but we're anxious to show you the underbelly of this cat.
More pictures after the jump.
If you're going to own a car like the Jaguar XF Supercharged, then you should use it to drive someplace far away. Otherwise it's like owning a twin-engine offshore powerboat and never going beyond the breakwater.
So going north I found myself once again going past Blackwell's Corner, so I did the obligatory photo session in front of the two pieces of John Cerney artwork (you can also see the tall, full-length figure in the background), and bought some gas and also something to drink from the big store with all the 1950s memorabilia.
On the other side of the hill, I stopped at the little James Dean memorial built long ago next to the road house and garage in Cholame, not far from the fatal intersection where the most famous traffic accident in American history took place.
This is not a bad car to drive someplace far away.
It's got four doors, but the people in front are clearly in first class and the people in the back are not, so you travel without rear-seat passengers when you're going far away. The trunk measures out to 17.7 cubic feet, although it looks smaller, so there's one more reason to not give other people a ride.
In fact, maybe the best thing about the XF is that the rear seat doesn't make people want to come along for the ride, which cuts down on the whining from the rear seat on a long trip. This is the secret to a good road trip, no matter what your friends and family might tell you.
And with 470 hp under your right foot, you can pass everything but a gas station. Which is what brought me to Blackwell's Corner in the first place.
Really, why take the short way home? That's what I told myself as the Jaguar headed down the road from Templeton into the rolling country of ranches and vineyards outside of Paso Robles. Why not give the XF its head on these back roads between the coastal oaks?
Apparently I was not the first to go this way with similar intent, as this informal warning sign made from a classic Jaguar XJ6 suggests. It's right in the middle of a Y intersection, and probably the nursery behind the white fence has grown tired of drivers running out of talent on its doorstep.
This particular XF is way too much car for back roads, really. If you want to keep from sticking it in a dirt bank like the XJ6, you definitely need a plan before you put your right foot to the floor.
A flick of a switch on the center console gives you the usual quicker throttle response, enhanced manual control of the shift paddles, and more permissive stability control. This all seems like a fine thing, but I can't get along with the abrupt throttle response at all, as you can't help but make the car lurch whenever you try to finesse the gas pedal.
The brakes are great when it comes to pure stopping power, and the increased effectiveness from the pads ("brake rise") helps compensate for fade during long, hard stops from high speed. But at the kind of pace you drive on a back road, it's difficult to finesse the brake pedal. The pedal action is very light in effort at first, and then the brake pads seem to bite all at once, so once again you make the car lurch when it should be dancing.
Basically, this is a very, very tough car, and it's really meant for places where the road is wide open and fast, fast, fast.
When you're driving a 470-hp car, you can't help wonder where horsepower comes from.
This Jaguar has a lot of clues. Displacement? Forced induction (supercharging)? High-pressure direct fuel injection? Multi-valve cylinder head with variable valve timing? High compression? Rpm? Exhaust tuning?
It's gasoline, actually. And lots of it. If you want to make lots of power, you need lots of fuel.
After all, consider that a 7,000-hp engine for a Top Fuel dragster consumes 1.5 gallons of nitromethane per second. The fuel is almost in solid form when it enters the combustion chambers, and there are two 2.5-inch fuel lines running from the fuel tank to sustain fuel pressure during the four-second run.
So maybe there's no mystery about the Jaguar XF Supercharged's inability to pass a gas station. While running down CA Highway 33, the car practically turned off the road itself so it could nuzzle up against all the oil wells in the dusty flats east of Bakersfield.
Even your correspondent's notoriously balloon-footed driving style proved unable to coax more than 21.1 mpg from a tank of gas during the long trip to San Luis Obispo and back, and I also saw a tank of just 16.0 mpg. It's quite something to fill up this car's 18.4-gallon fuel tank and see the trip computer register less than 300 miles of cruising range.
Even so, this Jaguar makes me pretty darned pleased when I'm driving. As it swept down the Lerdo cutoff between the almond orchards and lemon groves, I felt like this was a pretty special car. Plus, it's not German, as I'm plenty tired of driving German cars altogether.
We were out at the track yesterday and part of the pre-test inspection includes checking all fluid levels. Now, I'm no technophobe, but I think car makers should at least give us the option of checking oil levels the old-fashioned way.
So there I was, in front of the Jag with the hood open. Brake fluid, check. Coolant level, check. Oil? In the absence of a telltale yellow dipstick indicator, I went right to the XF's touchscreen. After flipping through all of the menus a few times, I found nothing. Sigh.
Alright, fine. RTFM.
In order to check the oil, you have to toggle through a few screens on the gauge cluster with the power on but engine off. No big deal, BMWs do this too. But you also have to wait 10 minutes for the engine to cool down. Ugh.
I moved on to other tasks while the Jaguar slowly assumed the ambient temperature, tightening lugs, weighing cars, etc. Fifteen minutes later, I still got the "Not Available" message, but a few seconds later I finally got a reading.
I contend that most people don't check their own oil, and modern Jaguar owners check it even less often (classic Jag owners probably check it on the hour). But for the few that do check their own fluid levels, I think we should at least have the option of the good ol' traditional method.
Am I alone in this thinking? Am I just being a grumpy old man? I don't know, but, GET OFF MY LAWN!
I took the XF in for an oil change yesterday at 2,217 miles. That's early even for us. But an early oil change is protocol for us now given the heavy service our cars see.
I visited Anaheim Hills Jaguar in — you guessed it — Anaheim Hills for the first time and was neither impressed nor annoyed by the service. My service writer told me the XF wasn't due for service yet and didn't try to upsell me in any way. In fact, it seemed utterly routine when he set down the $225 estimate for the service and parts. I signed the paperwork and headed home.
A few hours later I got the call that the car was done and was being washed. Here's how it broke down:
- Labor @ $130/hour: $65.00
- 9 quarts Castrol SLX 5W20:$99.00
- C2D3760 oil filter: $34.62
- Hazardous waste fee: $4.68
- Tax: $10.36
Total: $213.66
You'll be heart broken to know we won't be doing any Rockford turns in the XF. We certainly love us some Rockfords, but it appears that Jaguar has made the XF rather Rockford proof.
I have my doubts that its shifter (Dare I even call it that?) is going to function well for the quick Reverse-Neutral-Drive transition required as the car rotates from traveling backward to traveling forward. As you can see in the above-linked video, this needs to happen rather quickly and a traditional column, console or stick shifter gets the job done pretty well.
In case you've never seen a Rockford turn, here's Jim Rockford, the man himself, demonstrating the move. Stay tuned until 1:10.
Supercharged V8 vs Twin-Turbo V8. How does our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged keep up against the standard of the ssegment, the 2011 BMW 550i?
2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged vs. 2011 BMW 550i Track Test
Come on, we all know the Jaguar emblem was inspired by crossing the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl with the Autobot logo.
Tell me why I'm wrong.
It's hard to get over the gimmicky nature of the XF's rising transmission dial. Then again, whenever I look at the overall design of the center console in our Jaguar I can't help but notice that its actually a sleek, simple design that works.
It puts everything you need right at your fingertips — the start button, the shifter, the "sport" button (that would be the checkered flag one) and the brake release. Why they bothered to waste space on the "speed warning button" is a mystery, but everything else is in a good spot.
Heck, it even looks all nice and symetrical. Can't say the same for most of the setups out there these days.
Do not listen to anyone who says the Jaguar XF's backseat is not spacious enough. Do not care if a con in a review states the XF's cabin is "smaller than those of its competitors."
I say this because they're just the sort of complaints that lead the BMW 5 Series to grow into a bloated limousine. The XF's back seat is just fine as it is and the car as a whole is big enough. Having said that, one of the things I so dearly love about this Jag is that it feels small even if it really isn't. The low, more enveloping greenhouse is a reason for this, but so too is the crisp response of the car's controls and the general feeling of being light on its feet. I'm loathe to make a cheeseball, punny comparison between Jaguar the car and jaguar the cat, but there's some truth to it. Every time I drive the XF it feels like it's just the right size.
If you think your back seat needs to be big enough for Dikembe Mutumbo, that's swell, please buy something else. But kindly shut up when a survey comes around asking "How can we improve the Jaguar XF?"
There's no way to describe the Jaguar XF Supercharged's 5.0-liter V8 other than effortless. The audible histrionics of other supremely powerful cars almost imply that the engine is working hard to generate that much thrust. They're big, they're showy, they want to tell the world they're fast rather than demonstrating it. Not the suitably British Jag. It's the epitome of smooth with only a subdued warble serving as a tell-tale sign you're not in something powered by electrons (the rapidly retreating gas gauge being the other). The term sneaky fast most certainly applies. Just twitch your big toe, blink and you'll be going 75.
BMW's new turbocharged V8 is similar in its effortless character, but Jaguar did this smooth operator thing first. The word "character" gets thrown around a lot with the XF, and this is just one of the many reasons it's dripping with the stuff.
I drove our longterm 2012 Jaguar XF over the weekend, no trips out of the ordinary, staying fairly local and driving in a normal manner — no top speed runs or canyon strafings — over a distance totaling 88.2 miles, to be exact.
So imagine my surprise when I fueled it up on Monday (as per Edmunds' usual practice) and calculated that the fuel economy associated with this driving was 11.1 mpg. Granted this is a one-fill result and not the consequence of an extended scientific study, but even if it was off by ten percent, it's still pretty dismal fuel economy. Especially considering I wasn't mashing the throttle at every opportunity. Just a few of them.
Our monthly fuel economy roundups have the Jag at a running average of 12.4 mpg. Plus, Jordan mentioned this, uh, trait of the XF earlier too. You've been warned...
Our longterm Jaguar XF has a simple and effective cruise interface. It can be operated easily by feel alone, there's no silly adaptive nonsense, and best of all, there's no redundant, unnecessary, pointless "on/off" switch. That's correct, in this Jag you don't have to turn the cruise on before you turn it on — if you want to set your speed, you rock the scrolly wheel thing upwards to "+" and your speed is set. Done. No power switch needed.
Other automakers, especially those that require the cruise be "powered on" every bloody time the key is cycled, take note.
The above shot is of our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF's backup camera. Simple and straightforward, couple of guidelines and that's it.
Yowza. Lines galore! Which do you prefer?
Whenever I get the keys to any of our deluxe cars, my impulse is to either go high (brunch at Barney's) or go low (the drive-through at In-N-Out Burger). Yesterday, though, I had mundane chores to do, including grocery-shopping and a drop-off at the local dry cleaner.
It felt funny to drag a basket full of shirts and sweaters out of a Jag. But then this Bentley Eight showed up and I realized that some luxury cars have day jobs.
So what’s the sense in having a car like this unless you give a ride to your friends?
So when Edmunds.com had the big company meeting here in town, I put on the chauffeur’s cap for Rick French, Stephanie Miller and Nick Lindgren, as seen above.
Surprisingly, no one attempted to jump from the car when I made the full-throttle run down the 20th Street on-ramp.
Rick French compared the XF to his Genesis V6 sedan back in Philadelphia, from which he has stripped most of the badging, and he longed for his old, all-wheel-drive BMW 5-series wagon (he plays the drums, so he's always looking for plenty of room).
Stephanie Miller giggled like she’d just lucked into a particularly good ride home from the high school parking lot and was particularly drawn to the Jaguar’s soft-leather upholstery, which whispered to her of impossible luxury.
Meanwhile, Nick Lindgren said the 470-hp Jaguar XF Supercharged didn’t remind him at all of the Jeep Wrangler that he’s driving around Minneapolis.
It’s easy to take this Jaguar XF for granted when you read about it, but even a short ride with French, Miller and Lindgren proved that no one takes a car like this for granted. It’s a very special piece, and it would be a once in a lifetime purchase for almost everyone. It’s silly to pretend that we’re anything but thrilled to pieces every time we get a chance to drive it.
After our beautiful Jaguar XF sits in the sun for a while, the interior gets a little ripe. At first I thought the alcantara was to blame but a close-up sniff tells me otherwise.
The culprit is the huge leather-topped dash. It doesn't exactly smell like feet wrapped in leathery burnt bacon, but it smells a lot like hot leather.
Just something to consider when opting for this much hide in a vehicle.
This weekend I drove our long-term Jaguar XF to a posh charity event on the beautiful Honda campus in Torrance. Evening Under the Stars featured food and wine from a large number of local restaurants. Proceeds from the event benefited a local hospital.
I wasn't there as a guest of Honda or I would have brought our 1991 Acura NSX. I was there to support one of the restaurants, Aimee's Bistro, a five-star French restaurant in Redondo Beach. So, I went in comfort and luxury in our Jaguar XF.
The special guest was Kenny G who performed and donated a saxophone to the silent auction and signed bazillions of CDs.
I didn't know much about Kenny G before that night. He was really nice and added an air of sophistication to the evening. He strolled through the crowd playing and posing for pictures before taking the stage.
Click through for some video from the event...
Kenny G Performing
Kenny G Demonstarting How He Can Hold a Really Long Note
Apparently, some folks over at Jaguar read our long-term blogs and informed us that, yes indeed, the electronic stability- and traction-control system can be defeated. After the first test with DSC in Dynamic mode (thus limiting the car's true potential), we decided we should retest our new XF sans Nanny McPhee. We did just that and we'll post the results shortly, but here's a tease from the test driver's note pad...
Acceleration: After learning to press/hold the ESC disable button for about a half-hour (Ten-Mississippi actually), I got a brief message on the IP. Sure enough, the XF then lit the rears "with extreme prejudice." I found a predictable, sweet spot on the launch at around 1,500 rpm where I could get the rear tires to sing a little without hazing them before I used WOT. It worked well, but I don't think the shifts were especially sporty. I tried to use the chequered-flag Dynamic mode, but then it turned traction control back on. So then I shut off ESC and it seems to engage Dynamic (I saw a flag on the IP) but without the zippy-shift protocol. I'm not sure the car was any quicker/faster with the ESC/Trac off due to the electronic trade offs.
Skid pad: With ESC off, the XF finds a delicate, neutral place with mild understeer on the limit. I could have easily wiggled my big toe and made it oversteer.
Slalom: With ESC off, the XF feels free, frisky and playful. Of course, the temptation is for lurid slides (and it will do that), but the quick way between the cones was to use delicate and precise throttle input to coax a little rotation at each cone and save the uppercut for the exit. I was a little surprised and pleased with how quick, friction-free, and precise the steering remained with this added (or subtracted?) measure of ESC off. There's no need for heavy steering — even in a car with sporting intentions. Even when going slide-ways through the last gate, I always felt in complete control. Nice predictable behavior which is more than I can say for current BMW sedans when pushed outside their 8/10ths comfort zones with ESC disabled.
Jaguar sales for July 2012 were up 3 percent over 2011. The XF sport sedan is Jag's leading model selling 485 units last month, up 20 percent for 2012 over last year.
For the 2013 model year, Jaguar is adding two new engines to the XF and XJ sedans, a fuel-efficient turbocharged four cylinder and a supercharged V6.
If you had the moolah, would you buy a Jaguar XF?
The front seats in our Jag XF strike a near-perfect compromise between comfort and lateral support. On the first, yes, they're comfortable to the point you don't even think about them — always a good sign.
To the lateral support, it's excellent. The seat really holds you in place. And, it's not just the seatback that has the good bolstering, as on most cars, but the seat cushion as well provides good grip for your legs.
Takahashi and I were driving in a new Audi Allroad yesterday. I thought that its textured metal trim looked quite nice, but when I ran my fingers over it I realized it wasn't textured at all. It was an optical illusion created by a cleverly designed print. Clever, yes, but still fake.
Smash cut to several hours later when I'm driving home in our Jaguar XF. That metal-look trim looks textured and when you run your fingers across it — voila! — it is textured. It feels nice and special, and I especially like the contrast between the coarse texture of the trim and the buttery soft leather above. This mixing of materials in terms of both appearance and texture is very well executed and just one of the many little details that make such a difference in this car. Somebody knows what they're doing at JLR.
Now that, friends, is what's called a properly-sized gear indicator. Move the console shift knob to Sport and engage manual mode with one of the paddles and it gives you this huge display within the instrument panel. Yes. Invigorating throttle blips on downshifts, too.
It always bothers me when manufacturers put tiny little gear displays on their cars, particularly performance machines with which you (hopefully) will use the manual mode at some point.
The one aspect I don't like is that it doesn't automatically downshift to first gear at stoplights. And I sometimes forget (yes, despite that huge indicator staring me in the face). For instance, you could be in third gear or higher as you approach a stop and it will automatically downshift to second. But for some reason no further (fuel mileage?). Kinda bothers me when I find myself inadvertently starting from a stoplight in second gear. Luckily this car has the guts to power through it.
Needed to have a new set of tires installed on my sportbike in preparation for a track day I'm doing this weekend. That meant stuffing my wheels/old tires plus a new set of tires into the Jag's trunk to take them to the shop.
It was a tight fit but I was able to get them all in there (the rear wheel/tire is hidden). The Jag's trunk isn't tiny, but it is a bit oddly shaped with some protrusions that make it harder to fit unwieldy items, like wheels and tires. But then, most Jaguar XF owners probably won't be lugging around motorcycle wheels in their trunk. But then again, maybe they should...
Today I drove our supercharged Jaguar XF until its trip computer told me it had zero miles of fuel range. I then immediately pulled into a gas station and filled the tank. It took 16.680 gallons of premium. Jag says the XF has a 18.4 gallon fuel tank. In other words, I theoretically could have driven another 30 or so miles until the sedan would have run dry. That's a pretty big cushion Jag has built into the system.
I also want to thank Jag's engineering team for allowing the range to count all the way down to zero. Too many cars default to a useless message of "low fuel range" at somepoint, which of course defeats the purpose of the range display. If it's going to do that, a needle pointing to an E serves the same purpose.
I think Jaguar's supercharged 5.0-liter V8 is one of the best high-performance engines in the world. The all-aluminum DOHC mill comes in three flavors; 470 hp as in our XF sedan, 510 hp as in an XFR, XJ or Land Rover Range Rover Supercharged and 550 hp as in an XKR-S coupe or convertible, and I find each quite savory.
In the great V8 tradition, the blown Jag delivers big-block Chevy-like torque and a true high-performance roar up around its 6,500 rpm redline. Power delivery is dyno-chart perfection with a Nebraska flat curve and its throttle response is just how I like it, quick. Gotta love that direct injection.
I like almost everything about this engine, with the possible exception of its thirst, but there are no free lunches in this world.
The only real issue is the way it looks.
While the engineers and designers of BMW, Audi and Mercedes, especially AMG, spend time making their engines as beautiful as they are mechanically impressive, Jag's white coats do not. Open the XF's hood and the blown 5.0 is a sea of hard sharply-edged black plastic including a cheap looking and rather flimsy engine cover.
Remove it and the view gets worse, exposing an unfinished aluminum intake manifold that appears to have been cast by high school shop students.
Unfortunate. Hopefully this engine will get a literal facelift when it is under the hood of Jag's F-Type sports car in 2014.
If you want to grab a personal item from the glove box of our Jaguar XF, you don't need to waste time and energy groping and grappling some clunky latch. That's because access to the glove compartment is governed by an easily visible, easy-to-use button.
Best of all, the button is pretty attractive to look at, and makes a handsome addition to the sleek, passenger-side dash.
Aesthetically speaking, sometimes boldly exposing functional parts like this is a lot more effective than trying to hide them away.
Earlier, we discussed my love for our BMW X3's dedicated, extendable thigh support. (One of you called it hamstring support which might be more accurate.) Our Jag, unsurprisingly, has this feature, but does it in a worse way than the BMW.
Instead of having an extendable portion at the front of the seat, the Jag slides the ENTIRE seat bottom forward. Sure, it gives you a longer seat bottom, but it's also less comfortable, moving you along with the seat, and causes a funny gap between the seatback and the seat cushion.
Functional? Yes. Absolutely. As good as the X3? Nope.
It's that thing where you never notice a certain kind of car until you drive one, and then you see it everywhere.
The same thing is happening to me with the Jaguar XF. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's where I live. Maybe there's some big commercial push by a dealer in my area. Maybe XFs are parachuting out of the sky.
Come to find out that there is a little something going on with Jaguar. The guys at J.D. Power and Associates love to measure every little thing, and they measure the response of new car buyers in the first 90 days of ownership with something called APEAL - Automotive Performance, Execution, and Layout.
Here's the way J.D. Power describes the study:
"The APEAL Study examines how gratifying a new vehicle is to own and drive, based on owner evaluations of more than 80 vehicle attributes. The 2012 APEAL Study is based on responses gathered between February and May 2012 from more than 74,000 purchasers and lessees of new 2012 model-year cars and light trucks who were surveyed after the first 90 days of ownership. The APEAL Study complements the Initial Quality Study (IQS), which focuses on problems experienced by owners during the first 90 days of ownership."
You can look closer at the results if you like, both the overall results and the rankings by segment.
Jaguar doesn’t get a first place in any particular segment, so it’s easy to overlook the brand until you look at the overall score. There Jaguar is tied for second overall, plus it’s the most improved brand in the survey.
It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on here, of course. The buyer of a new car tends to have blind faith in his choice, especially if he’s spent $50,000 or more on it. Maybe people are tired of German brands anyway. Maybe a Jaguar is cheap and new people are finding it. There’s no explaining it, really. I’ve been explicating surveys like this for decades and I’ve found it useful to never make too much of them, either on the positive side or the negative side.
But at least you can say that something is going on at Jaguar, even if we don’t know exactly what it is. And that’s kind of interesting all by itself.
Jaguar announced pricing recently for the new XF 2.0-liter, 4-cylinder turbo and XF 3.0-liter supercharged V6. Both are new engine choices for next year. The 238-horsepower XF 2.0 starts at $47,850 while the XF 3.0 starts at $50,875.
What do you think?
Check out the interior of our 2012 Jaguar XF. What do you think? Does it look like the interior of a $72K car?
While scooping my belongings from the XF's door bin, I was pleased to discover that the bin is lined with felt. It's a nice touch. Beats coarse plastic, that's for sure.
With luxury cars, details make all the difference, and our Jaguar has some appealing ones.
Our XF has one of those rearview cameras with the lines that turn with the steering wheel to show you which direction you're headed in. This tech is pretty common for cars in this price range.
In any event, it was appreciated the other night when I had to parallel park the Jag, and I found it remarkably easy to use.
As I see it, tech like this is especially helpful in luxury cars, where even the smallest ding can put a serious dent in your wallet.
Let's say you're driving a friend home. Let's also say he's had a few beers. Let's also say this is the same friend, who in high school, thought it was funny to randomly turn on your hazards to get a rise out of the kid who took driving really seriously.
Now, let's also say you've just climbed into a Jaguar XF and point out the neat bit of automotive theatre that commences when you climb in: The pulsing starter button, the rotating air vents and the rising shift knob. Let's say he wasn't all that impressed, but did think the shifter was cool.
As you drove along, he starts to run his fingers on it as people are apt to do since it's so nicely detailed. He then starts making laser-firing noises for some reason, more because he's a nerd than because of the beers. He then shifts you into neutral ...
In the middle of an intersection while driving around a left-turning car on a two-lane road. The engine revs, you yell "That's the shifter you idiot!" and twist the car back into drive.
"I thought it did something with the radio," he says, obviously confusing the shifter for iDrive and finding his mistake just as funny as turning on the hazards.
This is entirely hypothetical, of course, and in no way did this happen beat by beat Saturday night. And I don't think it speaks to a problem with the rotary shifter at all. Sure, if I was a California elected official or Ray LaHood, I'd probably demand that a huge yellow sticker be placed next to it in order to fend off idiots, then translate it into Spanish to defend against Spanish-speaking idiots as well. But I'm not, so idiots will just need to sit in the back seat or know that their hands are bound to be right smacked.
Jaguar recently announced that the 2013 XF will be available with all-wheel drive along with a 340-horsepower supercharged V6 and a 240-hp turbocharged inline-4. Eight-speed automatics and an auto-stop/start system will be applied to all models.
I can't really underscore enough how important this development is for Jaguar. Two weeks ago on the 2013 Lexus LS launch, a Lexus product development rep said that nearly 100 percent of LS models sold in the midwest and northeast come equipped with all-wheel drive. In total, 40 percent of all LS' sold send their power to all four wheels. At the same time, there's a reason BMW has xDrive, Mercedes 4Matic and Audi banks on Quattro — people in the snow belt don't want rear-wheel drive. The addition of all-wheel drive for both the XF and XJ immediately open it up to a huge number of luxury buyers who previously would've considered Jag a non starter.
As for the new engines, the XF is now in a far better position to compete with the 5 Series, E-Class and A6. As much as we adore our 470-horsepower V8, that's not exactly what I'd consider the powerplant of a volume seller. A new turbo-4 base engine and the supercharged V6 that'll replace the previous 5.0-liter V8 quite simply makes a boat-load of sense and is way overdue. Plus, the XF already feels so lithe and light weight that I suspect less power won't be a problem at all. If the 5 Series can roll with a four-banger, you'd better believe the XF can.
Obviously, you couldn't talk me out of our XF Supercharged and its 470 hp sent to the rear wheels. Yes, even with that fuel economy and range, it's just too lustworthy to pass up. However, Jag is finally now in the position to better compete for those who would prioritize fuel economy and who would worry about fish-tailing into a snow bank. A lower price is bound to help too. I'll be very interested to look at Jaguar sales in one year to see the difference.
Jaguar went with a crisp red, white and blue color scheme for the XF's gauges.
What do you think? Worth saluting, or too garish for a luxury car?
Sometime in the next day or so, I'm going to wrangle up a Kurt Niebuhr, chuck him into our long term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged and drive from our home base of Santa Monica to the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska.
That's right, for a 7,000+ mile round-trip drive we picked a Jaaaaaaag. A Supercharged one that's averaging 17.5 mpg and fewer than 200 miles per tank. That has asymmetrical, 20-inch, staggered-width summer tires. At our furthest distance we'll be some 2,000 miles from the nearest Jaguar dealer and likely further from a set of Dunlop SP Sport MAXX tires.
Disregard the Jag's confused computer. This drive won't take 99 hours; it takes 63 hours. The way back, however, will take 66, as we're using a slightly different route that will take us down through Oregon, Washington and California.
This should be...fun.
While Mike Magrath and Kurt Niebuhr were driving our Jaguar XF through the wilds of Canada and Alaska, they encountered this odd vehicle. No budget for real police?
To celebrate the ability to comment on our site (woohoo!) you get to caption this picture all weekend long. We'll post our favorite on Tuesday afternoon.
Have a happy and safe Labor Day weekend.
P.S. If you still have trouble commenting, you may have to clear your cookies then try again.
I've missed the caption contest, haven't you?
Thanks to ergsum for our favorite caption.
Here are the others that didn't leave us flat:
Leave the cardboard and take the donuts (ed124c)
Kurt was feeling a little board on this road trip (noburgers)
DIY Law Enforcement (jmk261)
Did you see that? They went right through our roadblock! (ne_blackshirts)
COPS = Cut Out Paper Sedan or Catches Only Pinhead Speeders (exnevadan)
I told you he was profiling. (mnorm1)
The Really Thin Blue Line (ergsum)
The cops pursued us flat out! (ergsum)
100% Recycled vs. 100% Bada$$ (altimadude05)
Hosers On Patrol (rotaryboff)
Of course it has "run-flat" tires. (ergsum)
Jag lasts longer in burnout contest (noburgers)
Gentleman, Wood your throttles (noburgers)
A real cop out. (vt8919)
Meow, I'm gonna have to give you a ticket on this one. No buts meow. It's the law. (kimosi)
Smokey and the Bandsaw (noburgers)
Plywood Poseur Snags CA Hoser (noburgers)
I thought it was the boarder patrol. (explorerx4)
Even running "flat out" the Crown Vic didn't stand a chance. (rustyshacklfrd)
Can't wait until the officer 'draws' his gun (snipenet)
Wood trim is optional. (vt8919)
Police de Parchment? (snipenet)
What a cop out! (jmk261)
Will the cop fit? (jmk261)
Thanks for participating.
I really like Jaguars, but it’s hard for me to get my head around this supercharged Jaguar XF. A 470-hp monster seems kind of pointless when people expect a Jaguar to deliver elegant lines, a dash of chrome, and those cool, ice-blue instrument colors.
And then I remember the first time I saw the Group 44 Jaguar XJ-S at a Trans-Am race in 1977.
Bob Tullius, a Kodak salesman from Virginia, had spent much of the 1960s and early 1970s racing a succession of worthless British sports cars with spectacular success thanks to his own press-on driving, spectacular preparation by a small group of innovative engineers and mechanics, and the sponsorship of Quaker State oil. His success later led Jaguar back to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the 1980s for the first time in about 20 years and helped the company rediscover its racing heritage.
The first time I ever saw the XJ-S, the quality of the presentation made it stand out. Part rubbed-on stock bodywork, part tube-frame chassis, part wide racing tires and part hand-built V12 engine, the XJ-S represented everything American hot rodders had learned while racing during the 1960s. Of course, it also looked about as big as a house compared to the Porsche 911s against which it was racing.
As we used to say, this Jaguar might be just a kind of Camaro under the skin, but it was a really, really good Camaro. At the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year, the Jaguar factory guys ran the 1978 version of Tullius’ XJ-S up the hill just to remind the Brits that a Jag can be capable of more than just an expression of affordable luxury.
Maybe if we painted up this XF in the white-and-green racing colors of Quaker State, I’d get the whole 470 hp thing. After all, Tullius’ 5.3-liter V12 dynoed at 550 hp, so we’re talking about the same power more or less.
The Leaper and the Growler are the two symbols of Jaguar, and their use as ornament on the company’s products is the subject of the usual British fascination with automotive iconography.
In fact, the use of the Leaper as a badge on the trunk of the Jaguar XF has been the subject of much controversy among Jaguar guys.
According to the dusty books that I’ve pulled down from my own shelves (am as bad as the Brits, eh?), the Jaguar name was selected by William Lyons himself in September 1935. He made the selection from a list of other various animal-theme names proposed by the Nelson advertising agency. It was meant to simply identify the models of the two sedans and SS sports car made by his firm, then known as Swallow Sidecar (SS), as in "SS Jaguar." The company had begun after WWI as a company that made motorcycle sidecars, and only after WWII did the company become known as "Jaguar."
The Leaper first appeared as a hood ornament cast from bronze early in 1936 for the personal Jaguar sedan of company designer Bill Rankin. William Lyons described it as “looking like a car shot off a fence,” but he approved it for use as an accessory. Soon after, the design was refined into its now-familiar, vastly more classic shape by F. Gordon Crosby, a self-taught illustrator now legendary for his watercolor portraits of the motoring life for AutoCar from 1906 to his death in 1943.
First sold to the public by Swallow as a kind of accessory for the Christmas season of December 1938, the Leaper was subsequently revived in slightly refined form as an optional hood ornament for the 1955 Jaguar Mark 1 2.4-liter sedan. Its shape has evolved several times since, and it adorned Jaguar hoods for nearly 50 years. With the Jaguar XF and XJ, the Leaper became a trunk badge.
Meanwhile, the Growler seems to have come from a badge created for the first Jaguar XK120 sports car, and it has evolved through several different shapes for various grilles, horn buttons and truck-release buttons of Jaguar cars over the years since then. It’s a grille badge for the Jaguar XF.
Really, probably more than you needed to know. But if you’re going to set yourself apart from the rabble of latecomers that are rushing to embrace the Jaguar brand, this is the kind of stuff you have to know. In the end, there will always be a test.
It all started innocently enough over coffee. There may have been bagels, too. My boss takes a swig, gets the same look as when he bought our Long Term Buick Grand National and says, "Porsche is having an event in Anchorage, Alaska. I think we should drive there. Do you have a few minutes today to look into this?"
"Awesome" isn't always the right response to your boss' query, but right then, it was all I had. It was better than "PICKMEPICKMEPICKME!"
But what was there to look into? Drive West and then North until people stop drinking milk out of bags and I can see Russia, right? Not quite.
The first stumbling block was one that, as Californias, we often take for granted: Pavement. "Is it even paved yet?" someone asked. They'd done the drive a couple of decades back and the Alaska Highway was mostly gravel. An unpaved road would severely limit our choice of vehicles.
This is when I discovered The Milepost. The Milepost is a one-stop resource for driving the Alaska Highway and the first question of their FAQ is "Is the Alaska Highway Paved." As it turns out, yes, they finished paving the Alaska Highway in 1992(!) and the worst you'll have to worry about are "gravel breaks" during road repair — more on those beauties later.
So our 49th state is, in fact, connected to the rest of the U.S. by a paved road. Good news, there. But what of the actual route?
Until that day, my default map program was Google Maps. Unfortunately, if you try and connect Anchorage and Santa Monica, the Googles want you to take an annoyingly long (and unfortunately expensive) ferry up the coast. Ferries defeat the purpose of a road trip. This lead me to two startling realizations: 1) I had unintentionally become reliant on the internet for directions and 2) I was exclusively using Google. In turn, this brought about a stunning find: Mapquest still exists and is very, very good!
Thanks to Mapquest, I found two routes that would do the trick: One longer but quicker (61 hours, 30 minutes over 3,714 miles) route that would take us through Nevada, Utah, Montana, a bit of Idaho, Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon. The other route, shorter but slower (64 hours, 30 minutes over 3,488 miles), is more inland and makes use of Interstate 5 and a non-divided two-lane through most of British Columbia.
The solution was, of course, to do both in one epic 7,202 mile loop. If you have to drive both ways, why take the same route?
Finally, there was the issue of services. According to Mapquest and the Milepost, there were services, usually, every 100 miles (or so) unless the station was closed, out of fuel or shut down for the season. With careful planning and a couple of gallons of gas in a jug, getting stranded shouldn't be a problem. We'd figure out food and lodging en route.
We have a number of cars in our fleet that would be good for this trip. Our A8L is a luxury missile with AWD, all-season rubber with fat sidewalls and an estimated cruising range of of 666.4 miles. Our nav-equipped Camry offers luxury trappings, a 595 mile range, 35 mpg highway rating and Toyota reliability. We've also got an Explorer XLT EcoBoost, an Infiniti JX and a BMW X3 in our fleet. Those would all make very good, very safe options.
But we chose our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged.
With a big, supercharged V8. With a 21-mpg EPA estimate that we've never come close to. With staggered-width 20-inch summer performance tires with no sidewall and a temporary spare. With very little ground clearance and sport suspension. With a relatively small interior and 17.7 cubic-feet of trunk space. With the perception of Jaguar reliability and, at our furthest, being 2,000 miles from a Jaguar dealer.
Why? Because if our Jag can make it, so can pretty much anything else.
To follow this road trip, either obsessively monitor the Long Term Road Test Blog home page, or check this handy link to the 2012 Jaguar XF.
Starting this road trip from our office would've made more sense. For one, Kurt and I were already meeting there. Second, the gas station that officially marked the beginning of the trip is just feet away. But, just about 2 miles away was this: The Santa Monica Pier. We didn't want to waste any time, but we also didn't think 4 miles would matter at all on top of a 120+ hour road trip.
Before that, though, we had some packing to do.
As I've mentioned before, the Jag's equipped with silly staggered-width Dunlop SP SPort MAXX summer tires sized 255/35ZR20 up front and 285/30ZR20 out back. Can't you just feel the compliance? Beyond that, however, we were very concerned about serious/multiple blowouts. We knew the roads would be paved, but we didn't know the quality of the roads. Were they nice, or were they, like Wilshire here in LA, bombed-out tire-killers? With gas stations up to 100 miles apart, we figured we would be, at any time, 1,500 miles from a Dunlop Sp Sport MAXX.
So we cheated a little bit and called Jaguar. They provided us with the car, after all, and figured they wouldn't mind providing us with a mounted backup tire to supplement the temporary that comes with the car. The rim doesn't match, but in a pinch, it would work.
We also decided, with a projected range of barely over 200 miles per tank, that we should have a spare gallon of gas. Just in case.
The tire, the Jerry can, my suitcase and Kurt's tripod took up all of the space in the trunk. Kurt's bags had to live in the backseat.
The Valentine One found a nice little home behind/above the rear-view mirror. Cables were wired down the passenger side and into the remote controller down on the power-port on the center console. The GoPro is capturing images for a stop-motion video. It's not as obtrusive as it looks.
Well, this is it. Zero miles on Trip B. No turning back now. Before we really get started, though, we had another point-of-interest to hit just to make this more extreme.
Quick: What do you think of when you think of Alaska?
Bears? Russia? Seaplanes? Snow? Mountains?
All good options. If you thought "Death Valley!" then, well, sorry to break the news to you, but you may just fit in with us. Death Valley, and Badwater in particular, is the polar opposite of Alaska. Alaska is lush and verdant with abundant springs and glacial lakes. Alaska is the home of Mount McKinley (or Denali if you're into that kind of naming convention) which is the highest mountain the the U.S. Prospect Creek, Alaska is also the home of the lowest-ever temperature in the U.S at -79.8 F.
Death Valley, on the other hand, is home to the highest temperature ever recorded on the planet (take that, Libya!), 134 degrees. Badwater Basin is also, at 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the U.S.
This was also our last chance to have some fun with the Jag as the roads getting into/out of Death Valley are a BLAST.
As you'd expect of a brand-new car in 2012, the Jag had no problem with the 118-degree heat or the way we were treating it on the curvy roads. The tires stuck, the motor pulled and the automatic transmission was responsive enough to keep us entertained.
Getting these shots added about 4 hours to the drive and some 270 miles. It also provided the worst fuel economy of our trip.
Worth it.
Driving from LA to Alaska is pretty cool, but driving from Death Valley to Alaska just has a certain ring about it.
The first real leg of our trip to Alaska just so happens to be one of the more boring portions of the drive. After Death Valley you just hop right back onto the 15 at Baker and drive North until Canada.
This is not an exciting drive. You go through Vegas, a chunk of Arizona, Salt Lake City and skirt Zion National Park. While there are some nice rock formations and vistas, really, this is a drive we've done before and on this trip those spots were simply dots that flew by on the nav. (I will take this opportunity to tell everyone to go to Zion National Park if you haven't done so. Spectacular.)
Two things made those dots fly by quicker...
Yes, yes, everyone's all excited about Texas having 85-mph speed limits, but right here in Utah we've got 80 which, especially in the rain, is darned good for rolling over the odometer.
The second thing aiding our progress was the Jag itself. This thing LOVES 80 mph on the freeway. It's quiet, stable and totally relaxed at these speeds and when we cruised into a fairly serious rain storm, the Jag was totally composed. Sixth could be a little taller as, according to our testing, it turns 2,000 rpm at 70 and here at 80, it was spinning higher than a luxury car should at cruising speed. That's the price you pay for a performance luxury car, though.
Oh, and thanks to the massive supercharged motor, if you need some throttle for a pass, you've got it in spades. We didn't want to have to stop for fuel too frequently, though, so we tried not to dip into the power reserves too frequently.
We didn't get the best fuel economy of the trip on this leg, but we did crush the previous range and fuel economy records with a 333.6 mile tank that worked out to 22.05 mpg. Oh, and we also had this tank where we averaged — including this photo stop — 76.8 mph.
Day one took us a over 800 miles and deep into Utah — the Death Valley trip really slowed us down. Canada was practically in our sights.
One of the main concerns we had with taking our 2012 Jag XF Supercharged on a 7,000+ mile road trip, was the range. The EPA says that our Jag has a max range of 282 and the furthest we'd ever managed on a tank was 265.2. During that 265.2 mile tank, the driver said that he'd driven it as gently as possible had filled up when the needle read nearly zero. Still, he only managed to put 12.575 gallons of fuel in for an overall fuel economy rating of 21.1 mpg.
12.575 gallons in an 18.4 gallon tank? And it read empty? What gives?
Well, for starters, the Jag is a bit of a wuss.
As you can see in the quick shot of the Jag's owner's manual, when the needle reads empty, there's a reserve fuel capacity of 1.5 gallons.
So already your hamstrung on capacity, but the Jag takes it one step further and does a fairly poor job at estimating your range. This means that when the Jag gets all panicky and tells you to fill up, you've likely got another 40-50 miles left at minimum.
We assumed that the estimated range would increase as we started on our long, long highway slogs, but we had no idea by how much, and no idea if we could even beat that 21.1 mpg trip.
One final sticking point was what to do if we ran out of fuel. See, the manual says that once you run out, you need two gallons of fuel to get things started again and our can was a simple 1-galloner. We decided to play it safe: 1) If we were below 1/2 a tank and the next fueling station was more than 100 miles away, we fill up. 2) If the warning turned red (we assumed it would turn red when you hit the reserve tank) instead of yellow, we'd add the extra gallon before running out and limp to the next station as slowly/efficiently as possible.
30 potential fillups on one road trip. Stopping is a-productive, once we stopped playing in Death Valley, we focused on range. Any guesses as to how many fillups it actually took?
Somewhere on Utah's fantastic 80-mph highways, this happened. We missed it by 11 miles which, at this speed, is something like 8.5 minutes. We tried. Sorry.
In our 5,000 miles with the Jag we've had absolutely no problems (we did an early oil change as is our protocol) and, with at least 5,000 more miles left to go on this road trip alone, we were hoping that trend continued.
(Note: The passenger took the photo from a safe distance and then cropped way in.)
We drove through Idaho. It looked like ....
Or maybe that was Montana...
Or maybe it was Alberta. From Utah until you hit the Rockies, it's all kind of an amberish/tanish blur.
For some reason, Kurt was reluctant to get out of the car when we were in line at the U.S./Canada border and aim his huge professional camera at the guy checking passports and get a shot of the Jag waiting to enter Canada for the first time in its life. (We'll run into Kurt not wanting to get out of the car once more later on.) Surprisingly enough, getting into Canada with a car owned by Jaguar and bursting with electronics was a breeze.
This leg of the trip, from Idaho (or did we stay over in Montana?) to as far north as we could manage, was incredibly boring. This part of Alberta is huge, mostly flat, and devoid of anything resembling a turn. So, at the expense of making time, we made some detours.
Dan Edmunds suggested this one and, conveniently enough, it's just a few miles away from Mayor Magrath Drive. Mainly, I think, he liked the name and wasn't that impressed with the cleverness or the historical significance/importance of the buffalo jump.
For those who haven't figured out what a buffalo jump does, here goes: North American Indians would dress up as either buffalo, coyotes or wolves, get the heard of bison all riled up and chase them over cliffs. As you can imagine, 1,500 pounds of plains bison does not land delicately when shoved off of a cliff. Lucky ones died quickly, otherwise, they simply had their legs shattered during the fall and hung around until a kind person would come by and kill them for meat/fur/bones etc. It's a hugely effective, if incredibly brutal, way to kill lots of really big things quickly. Buffalo jumps died out after Europeans brought horses to the native people.
According to the Wikipedias, it got its name from an unfortunate young Blackfoot who wanted to watch the buffalo fall from the bottom of the cliff.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump also gave us our first taste of what to expect in Alberta. Those are shotgun blasts. And you thought only Americans shot up their own signs?
Alberta is, by far, the most American place I've ever been — and I've been to Texas. The speed limit hovers around 110 km/h, but every's driving 120 or higher and our Jag is by far the smallest vehicle on the road. F-250 King Ranches outnumber everything by a margin of, oh, 75:1. They're all towing. They're all speeding. They're all awesome.
This part of the drive, like the ones before it, are simply getting there. This is like the line to get your ticket processed and fingerprint scanned at Disney. It's not fun, but you've got to do it to get to the real stuff.
Once you hit Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek, things start to change.
Our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged has the $850 "Adaptive Front Lights and Intelligent High Beam" option.
They're woefully insufficient on seriously dark roads. (And no, it wasn't because the cover was dirty. We cleaned them constantly and headlamp washers are standard.)
That's the view you get with the high beams. Virtually no edge-lighting and not nearly enough forward light to make good decisions at near-freeway speeds. The "official" time between when an object was illuminated and when it was, more or less, at the front bumper was "one-Mississi." Kurt said, "The sealed-beam headlights in my 1966 Mustang are better. Honestly. Think about that."
Driving isn't like visiting a haunted house. It's not fun when things randomly appear out of the aether and into view and when you're driving the Alaska highway, there are a lot of things that randomly pop up on the road. Things like
-Bears
-Moose
-Caribou
-Sheep/Goats
-Hitchhikers (seriously)
-bison
-cyclists (again, seriously)
-roadkill of nearly all of the above
-chunks of rock
-abandoned cars that have hit bison
-random patches of gravel
-sharp corners that keep you out of giant lakes
You know us well enough to take this next statement seriously: The headlights were so bad we felt unsafe going the speed limit and had to take it down by at least 5 mph as soon as the sun fully set. Thankfully, the sunset was sometime after 10pm. Still, this annoyance made us change both our plans and our scheduling. No more late night mileage marathons.
As for that automatic high beam thing, it was the first feature we turned off because they kept flicking on-and-off in reaction to any and every light source.
There was, however, one side benefit to being forced to go slower. Once the light, and the heat, was gone, temperatures dipped into the high 20s. Summer tires don't like freezing temperatures.
It's about a 2,300 mile drive from Santa Monica to Fort Nelson, BC. 2,300 miles of long, straight, relatively boring roads. And until about Dawson Creek, BC (281 miles from Fort Nelson), things are pretty much normal. There are name brand gas stations, places to eat on the side of road, real hotels and civilization in general.
Then things change. The landscape changes. The trees change, Farmland is replaced by mountains while the low shrubbery has been replaced by birch and evergreen trees. This change happens almost exactly at Mile 0 of the Alaska highway.
And once you hit Fort Nelson, things get fun.
The Alaska highway from Fort Nelson, BC to the Alaska border is possibly the best road I've ever driven. If we section out only the section between Whitehorse and Beaver Creek, a 270ish mile drive, there's no doubt.
Leaving Fort Nelson, the road climbs into the Northern Rockies and, as you'd expect from a mountain road, gets nice and twisty. Thanks to the massive scale of Canada and the relative lack of steepness on this grade, though, there are very few switchbacks. Instead, the road features mile-after-mile of relatively new, grippy pavement laid out like a loose ribbon. It's all long sweepers, MASSIVE lakes, off-camber turns and elevation changes.
And, because this was the height of construction season, random three-foot long, road-wide patches of gravel where the pavement had been removed. Whee!
Canada is nice enough to give you appropriate warning before the gravel patches which almost all occur directly at the apex of the turn. It wasn't quite a rally stage, but it was close. The Jag likes gravel-induced oversteer. Whee!
Our policy during this drive was to swap drivers every time we got gas. Period. After my few hundred miles of gravel, moose, lake-views, and empty pavement, Kurt took the wheel around Watson Lake...just as the road got wide, boring and completely full of (mostly logging) trucks, bison, moose that wouldn't get off the road, and bears.
We swapped drivers again in Whitehorse — a town full of seasonal workers and criminals avoiding extradition to the US according to a local — when, miraculously for me, the road got fun again and the scenery turned truly epic. This route skirts Kluane National Park and follows the shoreline of the 43-mile long Kluane Lake through towns like Destruction Bay.
Like most glacial lakes, Kluane is an odd toothpastey blue (Kurt's term) that fades to green and black depending on the light and, even at these there's-not-a-speed-trap-within-1,000-miles speeds, it seems endless. We could have stopped for pictures at every turn. We nearly hit some Dall Sheep. We nearly pulled off the road to start building a cabin.
At one point, we went more than 2 hours without seeing another person/car. This is why we brought extra gas and an extra mounted tire.
Unfortunately, all good things have to end and, as the sun finally set sometime after 10pm, and finally far away from the world that there was no ambient/road lighting, two of the Jag's shortcomings were illuminated.
We'd read the weather reports and the archives of normal temperatures and figured, at worst, we'd see high 30s at night en route to Alaska.
High 30s, high 20s. What's the difference? To summer tires, a lot. It was somewhere a south of Beaver Creek, YT where the tires first started to give up. The temperature had dropped to something like 39 and, during a normal braking procedure for a turn, the ABS activated.
"This is going to be fun!" I said to Kurt. As the temperature dropped, the rubber's compound played less and less well with the pavement. Once again, something cool was happening and I was behind the wheel instead of Kurt. He's a faster driver, I've spent more time in winter/wet driving situations.
Things were going well enough until the sun fully set.
You already know from a previous blog that when the sun fully set, we were already going slower than we'd really like due to lack of visibility. Had we not already been doing 5 under, we may have been caught by the car's behavior when the mercury settled in below 35...and then below 30.
From that first whiff of ABS flutter at about 40-degrees until we pulled in for the night, the car got more and more playful as the temp dropped. At 35 degrees the Jag would understeer on fairly sharp corners. At 30 degrees, it was doing sweet four-wheel slides with just a slight poke at the accelerator. Thankfully the roads were dry.
Once again, though, we found ourselves going slower than the speed limit to continue driving safely. Getting all wild in the corners is great fun, having increased braking distances — especially considering the lack of visibility we had — is not. It wasn't as bad as driving on ice or on wet leaves, think more of a damp road with crappy tires.
So, we drove slower and pulled off sooner. Far worse things have happened on a road trip. On this trip we'd seen temperatures range from 118 in Death Valley to 29 in the Yukon Territory. This could be the first time I'd ever wanted all-season tires instead of dedicated summer and winter rubber.
Again we had to change our timing. Temps never fell below 45 in the daytime which is still in the normal operating zone for summer tires. We'd have to do all of our driving in the daylight.
It took five days to make it the 3,598 miles from Los Angeles to Death Valley to the Buffalo Jump to Alaska.
The guy we met at the Tok (Alaska) gas station was from Arizona which is, at this distance, close enough. He, and his turbodiesel Ram had been on the road since June and put 12,000 miles on the odometer. Considering the sights we saw — and drove straight past — that timetable seems more fun.
Our final destination on the trip was Anchorage, AK. They look close on a map, but driving from Tok to Anchorage takes the better part of 5 hours normally, but, since Kurt was driving, it took over 6. Not because Kurt's slow, he's not, but because he has terrible luck and a convoy of semis blocked any chance at making time on this road.
At least it all looked pretty much like this
I like the idea of electronic oil monitors. I like that they can warn you if things are going poorly on the fly. I like that they offer the convenience of checking your oil without getting dirty. I like that it should, ideally, make monitoring your oil level easier and thus help more people to do it more frequently.
If only...
With a normal dipstick it takes all of, including washing your hands after, 60 seconds to check your oil. It's ideal to let the engine cool for a bit first, but if you're on a massive road trip you can sort of fudge this and check it hot. It'll read a little high. That's okay. You can even, :::gasp::: check it on a non-level surface. It won't be exact, but you'll get a reading.
The Jag doesn't give you a reading in any of these circumstances. You have to park it on a level surface and wait. For 20+ minutes. Until that time, you get a warning that says ";Not Available See Handbook."; Waiting 20 minutes does not play into the way I do road trips so instead of checking the oil at service stations, I was checking it 10-20 minutes after I checked into the hotel at night. This is far, far more annoying than simply washing my hands.
The second strike against these things is the accuracy. Thanks to an early oil change, we went on this road trip with relatively fresh (@1,000 mile) oil. On Day 1, the electronic thingamabob said we were A-OK on that front and we started off. Day 3, the oil read good, too. Same for day 5.
On day 7 we were, all of a sudden, 2 quarts down. 2 quarts!! This wouldn't have happened with a dipstick.
As you can imagine, the Yukon Territory doesn't see many Jags and the woman running the local/only store was as surprised as I was. ";That pretty new car's burning oil? What a shame. Take a bumper sticker."; The sticker says, ";I drove the Alaska highways BOTH WAYS, Damnit!";
To get to Alaska, Kurt and I took the fast route. It looped us up through Idaho and Montana, Edmonton and a bunch of other Canadian cities en route to Dawson Creek, Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway.
To get home, we took the Western Access route. It's slower, twistier, connects directly to I5 — the same I5 that turns into a parking lot here in LA — and avoids Dawson Creek entirely. The road splits from our original route just before Watson Lake and connects to Highway 16 all the way to Prince George where we'll hop onto 97 which, eventually, turns into the 5.
This route is far, far less busy than the normal access route and this is where we expected to have problems.
Starting with the fact that about half of the route is this sealed one-lane job occupied mostly by logging trucks.
Our fears turned out to be unfounded as this route was spectacular. The pavement was a little rough, but not broken and the logging trucks were quick to wave us by.
The bigger problem was finding gas — a number of stations only sold diesel, and the ones we found that sold gas only sold 85.5 or 87 octane. Sorry, Jag, but given the choice between 87 and running out of fuel, I'm picking the low-octane every time. We went 556 miles on two-tanks of 87.
This leg was also the one with the furthest distance between fueling stations. We caught one station closing early and filled up with only 291 miles on the trip. Had we not caught them closing, we'd have had to sleep in the car until they decided to open again
Somewhere on the way towards in the U.S. border, not-quite-deep in the wilds of British Columbia, our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged tripped the 10,000 mile mark.
That's right, we crossed two milestones in one road trip. Not bad for a car we introduced on June 18.
Oh, and for those of you wondering, yes, it's in second gear and stopped. And we're driving in winter mode. The Jag's throttle is really touchy and that is not what you want when you're trying to get decent fuel economy and get good range. Snow mode reduces that and starts you off in second. It's far more liveable and far easier to live with. I'm going to keep it like that all the time.
Remember how I went on and on about how much I loved the seat coolers in our Lexus GS 350? Well after I spent this weekend driving around our 2012 Jaguar XF, I have to say its seat coolers left me feeling, well, lukewarm. With L.A. suffering from 100+-degree temps lately, having a car with seat coolers is a welcome luxury. But for some reason our XF's seat coolers just didn't provide the same cool and instantaneous relief that our GS 350's did.
After I turned them on, through the touchscreen, I put my hand on the seat bottom to make sure it was on. I could lightly feel some air but it wasn't especially cold. Considering that the Jag has a $9K premium over the Lexus, that's kinda disappointing.
But at least the seats weren't bun-scorchingly hot even after the car had been sitting in the hot sun for hours. Perhaps thanks to its light colored leather.
(Sorry for the delay on this one, I got wrapped up in going to Paris.)
Not that you really missed anything, the trip back was one of the more boring drives I've taken in quite a while. Anyone who's spent any time driving in the Pacific Northwest can confirm that people drive quite slowly and there are cops EVERYWHERE.
The Valentine One was having a fit the entire way. We were tired. The line at VooDoo Donuts was way, way too long. We just wanted to be home. Also, by this point we'd developed an annoying wheel wobble (felt like front left) that showed itself during braking. We weren't doing a lot of braking mind you, but when we did, it was annoying.
We did, however, make one stop: We pulled off with a couple hundred miles left to get some beauty shots of the car in full road-trip mode.
As you no doubt remember, somewhere around the midpoint of our really long drive to Alaska, the Jag surprised us by being 2qts of oil low. Unsurprisingly, the Jag's preferred Castrol SLX 5W20 juice was nowhere to be found. We did the best we could finding a nice 0W20 for relatively cheap — it was that or cooking oil.
That, combined with the new wheel wobble made the decision to take it to get service a no-brainer. We were about 1,500 miles from the deadline, but with a wonky wheel, 2qts burned and 2qts of non-matching oil, we weren't going to worry about a few miles. If they wanted to charge us because of this (instead of counting it as our scheduled free maintenance) we were fine with that.
We took it in for service at Hornburg Jaguar/Land Rover in Santa Monica before we even had a chance to get it washed. The service adviser looked impressed and asked, "What'd you do, drive it cross-country?" "Farther," I said. (Note: For those of you not in L.A., a dirty car is not a common site. A dirty luxury car is an abomination. Dirty cars are so uncommon they're a talking point.)
I told him about the burned oil, about the wobbly wheel and left the car there just shy of 9am. He said I'd get a call by noon when it would, probably, be ready.
I called at 2 and left a message.
And then again at 3.
And then again at quarter-to-5.
And then again sometime after they'd closed for the night.
The next morning I started over. My guy wasn't in yet, but I asked to speak to the manager. "Sure, she just walked in," quickly turned to "I'm sorry, she's in a meeting."
Finally, after two messages that day, she called me back and told me we were just waiting on a senior tech to road test the car. She assured me I'd get a call from my adviser as soon as possible.
Around 11, I got a call from the adviser saying the tech had driven it, confirmed the wheel wobble (thanks) and that it turned out to be a bent rim. We can't pinpoint exactly on which stretch of nearly-unpaved Canadian roadway this happened, but that hardly mattered. They'd attempt to balance it as a quick fix.
The balance took and we were allowed to pick up the car something like 24 hours after the initially agreed upon time. When we showed, the car had gotten a quick wash and thorough interior vacuuming. There was no charge.
As for the wheel balancing: It's good, but not perfect. I notice it, perhaps because I know. Others may just think the pavement's rough.
Days out of service: 1 night
Cost: Free
There's something perverse about being in a car this powerful and not being able to go. The only fun I really had was on an untrafficked stretch of Olympic Boulevard this morning for about 30 seconds. Other than that, I sat in the stop-and-go of the 405 or noodled along on suburban streets where the speed limit is 35.
If there's a circle of hell for long-term fleet drivers, it must be this: You get a great car. It's yours for all eternity. But it's mired in an infinite traffic jam.
What's your idea of car damnation?
There's an option buried in the info screen menu that lets you change the screen to this.
No info, no maps, no buttons, just the "leaper" stretching across the screen.
Now, my immediate reaction was: Who would bother doing this? You can't change anything when the screen is just an icon. But then I left it that way and realized you can still do pretty much all the same stuff with the steering wheel controls and the hard buttons that still exist. And in the meantime, I didn't spend any time starting at the screen in the middle of the dash.
Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.
I love playing music from my iPhone. I also love hands-free telephony. The problem is that our Jaguar XF seems to prefer using Bluetooth for both. Am I doing it wrong?
Obviously, I prefer the sound quality of the USB connection over the wireless variety, so I select "Dock Connector." Thanks, Jaguar for giving the option. So I'm enjoying my music, settling in to the song, singing along, then precisely 42 seconds later, silence. Whaaaa?
It turns out the car is still looking for the signal through the USB Dock Connector but my phone has inexplicably switched over to Bluetooth streaming audio. Referring back to the first photo, I can then select BT audio from the car's source options, and my music returns. Alternatively, I can use my phone to re-select Dock Connector and, voi-lah, my music returns. If I select Dock Connector, the exact same routine follows, at precisely 42 seconds of play.
I thought I had it all figured out when I used the voice command button on the steering wheel to request "USB Play," and it lasted much longer (about a minute and a half?) before self-reverting to Bluetooth, but Bluetooth won out again.
So, is it my phone or is it the car's software that is in control here? And here's the bigger question, why am I not the one in control of my audio source?
One final note: The bass response on this audio system is abysmal.
I sat down in our 2012 Jaguar XF and it felt as if the seat bottom was too short front-to-back. I put my hand on the seat adjusters, found all typical fore-aft, up-down, recline, and even seatback width, PLUS one more: Thigh Extender! Ahhh, that's better. It's interesting how rare this adjustment is, even as a manual slider on the front of the seat. It really makes all the difference, don't you think?
This is a steering wheel done well. It's not only a good size in terms of diameter, it feels good in your hands thanks to its thick rim and grippy leather.
I also like the satellite controls. They're easy to use without looking and not overly complex. As Jay has noted before, there's no reason for an on/off switch for the cruise control. Why shouldn't it be "on" all the time?
The fact that there's only one "phone" button is smart too. Having to look down to see which button answers and call and which one hangs up sort of defeats the purpose, no? I've found that the single button here usually figures out what you want, plus the voice commands are fairly straight forward so you can use them for more complicated commands. All in all, it's a useful setup for a layout that's not overly clogged with buttons.
I love a car that does what you tell it. When you need a quick burst of speed to carve through traffic, the Jaguar XF Supercharged responds immediately with smooth acceleration. It doesn't lag. It doesn't jerk around. It doesn't whine. It just does what you command.
I like that in a man, um, I mean car.
Our 2012 Jaguar XF runs on premium gas and has an 18.4-gallon fuel tank capacity. The EPA estimates the car should be good for 282 miles per tank.
When driving the XF, the fuel gauge seems like it moves down very quickly. But according to our fill-up records, we're getting slightly better fuel economy than the EPA ratings for the supercharged model.
EPA estimates:
city: 15
highway: 21
average: 17
Edmunds observed:
best: 24.4
worst: 9.0
average: 18.0
I'll admit it, I have no sense of direction. When I have to be somewhere I usually print out Google instructions and load the address into the navigation system. The nav system in the 2012 Jaguar XF is easy to use and has lots of display options. It presents you with a logical route and two optional routes or you can customize the way you want to go.
I used it yesterday for a two-hour round trip. In the morning it was very helpful. It was still dark out and I appreciated every time it spoke to me. On my way home it presented me with a screen asking if I wanted a different route because of impending traffic. I said no and it asked again. OK, I thought, I can at least look at the optional route it is offering me. I did and then said no. Traffic in L.A. is not unexpected and I knew what I was in for with my path. But it kept asking and asking and asking. It asked at least 20 times. No exaggeration.
I didn't go through all of the options before I left so someone must have previously chosen the "avoid traffic" selection, which is fine. But when I said no, I meant no. Stop covering up my map. I did eventually hit traffic as I got closer to home but it only delayed me by about 10 minutes.
I have a friend who owns a Jaguar XJ that is a few years old. When she was checking out our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF she said she really liked it except for one thing.
No Leaping Cat hood ornament.
She loves her Jag and keeps it in meticulous condition. And when the time comes for a new car, she would consider a new Jaguar but she would really miss the hood ornament.
Where have all the interesting hood ornaments gone? I miss them, don't you?
Everyone is always looking for good advice about cars. And you know how good advice is — smart, practical, thoughtful, measured, and fully amortized.
I hate good advice. That's why I recommend the Jaguar XF Supercharged to everyone I meet. Go big or go home, I say. This car is the most muscle-bound sedan on the planet right now, a wild choice that calls into question the whole tradition of good advice about cars.
It is bad advice in a Superman suit, like driving a 470-hp car to Alaska. It's great.
While I was out running some errands at lunch, I accidentally left my debit card at the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant. Of course I didn't realize it until after I drove away and was in line at Target to buy more candy for tonight's Trick-or-Treaters. (My daughter is convinced we're going to run out).
Anyway, a couple hours later I circled back to the restaurant to ask if they had my card. Sure enough, as soon as I walked in the lobby a girl at the register yelled toward the back, "It's the woman from the Jag!"
They remembered the XF, but now they can't remember where they put my card while they were waiting for me to return...
When the UPS truck pulled in front of me, I immediately reached over and hit the recirculation button on the Jaguar XF's center stack. I'd never seen a Brown truck spew so much filt before, but this one had really sizable clouds of exhaust billowing from its rear.
As I pressed the recirc button, the display screen said, "Timed Recirc On." That surprised me, but after a quick review of the owner's manual I learned there are really three settings, "Timed," "Latched," and "Auto."
I did not know.
Somewhere over the last couple of months my passing interest in Jaguar E-Types has grown into a full-blown obsession. I don't know why. I won't question it. But I fear the consequences.
Having our long-term XF Supercharged hasn't helped. Yes, yes, yes, I know, these are not the same car. They're as far away as cars get, but it's still a Jag and even this modern luxury-focused example makes me feel special.
So here I am, sitting in front of my monitor, browsing the classic car classifieds. The prices for a Series I E-Type fluctuate wildly, but it seems like one in the condition I'm seeking is in the $70-grand range. It just so happens that our XF Supercharged is around the same price, too.
So that gets me thinking (and that's never a good thing). Which would you rather have? On one hand, you have power, modern conveniences, doors that seal, an engine that starts, power, a quiet ride, iPod connectivity, power, air conditioning, rear seats and power. But, you see, I don't care.
An E-Type is just plain sexy. And like a lot of sexy things, it's probably a giant pain in the butt. Then again, I subscribe to the notion that everything in the universe is temporary, so I might as well enjoy life while I can. I'm not sure how I'll be able to swing this, but mark my words, I will.
So where do you fall? Modern luxury, or classic and temperamental?
The 2012 Jaguar XF is my current favorite car in the fleet. Why?
1. supercharged, 470-horsepower engine with 424 lb-ft of torque
2. swanky interior with high-quality leather and alcantara accents
3. immediately responsive to my right foot
4. it does special pop-up things at startup
5. good looks are always a plus
6. easy-to-use navigation that offers logical directions
7. steering wheel that feels good in my hands and doesn't have too many buttons
8. firmly bolstered but comfortable seats
9. cool-toned gauges that are easy on the eye
10. strong brakes
Anything you want to add?
Uh, oh. It's unlikely our XF fits this recall criteria, but we'll be double-checking, for sure.
2010-'12 Jaguar XF Recalled for Fire Risk
You might have heard about our longterm 2012 Jaguar XF's supercharged V8. I'm here to reaffirm that it's no joke — this engine punts the Jag around with laughable ease. Doesn't much matter how many revs are showing on the tach, you dip your toe, you better watch for flashing lights. And it's no lumpy, uncouth beast. The blown 5.0-liter does that whole Jekyll/Hyde thing quite well.
This power delivery is definitely the highlight of the car. Every time I drive the XF I end up with a stupid grin on my face because of it.
I know our Jaguar XF is willing to play my ancient iPod because I listened to it the whole time I took this trip. It has never, however, let me play it by plugging into the iPod connection. I have to use the one labeled USB.
But somehow our Jaguar has been reset or has defaulted to only looking for Bluetooth devices. Mike Magrath told me he knows how to switch this back to normal but it takes about 100,000 steps (possibly a slight exaggeration on my part) but it is not intuitive.
He is going to show me how to do it and we will report back to you.
I know, I know. It's 59 degrees outside, but boy do we like the Jaguar XF's heated seats and steering wheel on an OMG-chilly California morning. Few cars allow the seatback to be heated separate from the, ahem, bottom, but the Jaguar does.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled, "You don't know what real weather is" station.
You've read about how our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged did on the way to — and back from — Alaska, now read the whole story about what the 7,000+ mile trip was like. Once you're done with that (and the 170 captioned photos that continue the tale) check out the 308 photo Mega Gallery from our trip to get an even better look at what Kurt and I experienced.
These are the stories you've been waiting for.
Well, I suppose it wasn't THE perfect Bond weekend car. I could think of 10 better ones ... at the very least. But since we have a decided lack of Lotus Esprits in the long-term fleet (seriously, what the hell?), the only logical choice for this holiest of weekends for this James Bond nerd was our Jaguar XF.
It's British. It's beautiful. It's expensive. It's hilariously powerful. And oh, Skyfall is jam packed with JLR cars. There's a nifty Defender pickup in the pre-credits sequence, a Discovery police cruiser, an MI6 Range Rover and way too many Evoques parked in a government lot (that's where the product placement got a little much for yours truly). However, the most important vehicle was M's car — a Jaguar XJL.
No prominant XF's — at least none that I could remember — but as I pulled out of the ArcLight Hollywood after watching Skyfall, the grand alpine horns of On Her Majesty's Secret Service triumphantly playing over top the Jag's equally grand supercharged V8, it seemed a very appropriate automotive pairing.
(No, the above photo has nothing to do with the blog topic. But showcasing Kurt's awesome photos from Alaska seems better than a picture of the XF in the ArcLight's parking lot. By the way, make sure to read Magrath's captions, they're hilarious.)
Yep! Along with the Tom Fords, a garage door opener and an iPhone. Just thought you'd like to know.
I got my first seat time in the XF last night. And I'm as smitten as most of us. This was a pleasant surprise because I've never rated Jaguar much. It's just a marque that has never resonated with me, despite decades of indisputable style and class.
Ironically, the XF doesn't seem that stylish. The curves and proportions are right, but nothing really stands out. The channeled hood is nice, but overall the XF lacks the visual drama of its classic predecessors. That's fine with me. Feels like it has a sleeper quality, not unlike the last GTO. I didn't see the XF causing many double-takes. Then again, I had my hands full watching the road. The XF feels like the right car for someone with dough, but still unaccustomed to flashing it. Maybe it's the right car for some of the newly-minted Facebook guys.
The cat has immense power, of course. While warming up at idle, the sound from the exhaust is remarkable, the most refined Mustang you've ever heard. And that power holds consequence, too. I discovered that a downshift followed too quickly by throttle makes the rear-end wiggle, as a rush of boost comes on at about the same time as weight transfer. But it's a fun wiggle, until it's not and you're 180 degrees into the guardrail.
Not sold on the motorized vents and rising shift dial. Cool tricks, but can't help but think they would get old quick. Brakes are sensitive, too. Annoyingly so. But they look great under equally nice wheels, and sensitive brakes are preferable to the alternative.
Last week we reported on a fuel system recall for 2010-2012 Jaguar XFs. We called the Jaguar hotline and the operator informed us that our call was not part of the recall.
A few hours passed and our phone rang. It was Jaguar, "We researched further and found out your car is affected by the recall. Parts will be available beginning December 7th." Strange.
According to the recall notification, "Most of the affected vehicles were built between April 2009 and January 2010." We don't fall into that category. The notice added, "But a small number of 2010, 2011 and 2012 vehicles have had a fuel tank fuel outlet flange fitted as a service replacement part."
Perhaps the flange was replaced prior to our receipt of the car. Perhaps it is just a precaution on the part of Jaguar. After all, they do own the car. Regardless, we'll keep you updated.
Our longterm 2012 Jaguar XF's slow-responding, odd screen-flow-havin' touchscreen is a few generations behind the times and shows the confidence its designers/engineers had in the then-newish technology. The XF's interface would have benefited greatly from the addition of a knob or two.
Unfortunately, sometimes the ability to do something — in this case, incorporate many cabin functions into a single touchscreen interface — crowds out the decision of whether you should. I find myself saying this a lot about touchscreens in cars.
Every time I drive a car, it's hard not to think about what I would order. Or rather, what equipment would I get? What color would it be? What engine, etc. Sometimes the answer doesn't get beyond, "um, I wouldn't even buy that heap."
Inevitably, I'll probably end up on the car's Internet configurator. So please following along at the Jaguar XF Configurator as I figure out What I'd Order.
Well, let's see, I'm certainly intrigued by the new supercharged V6 for 2013 and I think it's great that Jag is offering a cheaper turbo-4 model. But let's face it, I'd want the Supercharged V8. I don't need the XFR.
OK. Exterior color is listed first, but let's see what Jag has in store for the interior. In order to have more color options as well as dash leather and higher-quality seat leather (the base stuff is actually kind of crappy), you have to opt for the Portfolio pack on the lower trims. But it's standard on the Supercharged. I LOVE the Navy dash, wheel and seat trim that's available with either Ivory or London Tan. Not sure if that'll go with the earth tones I'm thinking about for the exterior, though. So I'm going with London Tan seats and Ebony dash with Gloss Rich Oak.
I think the XJ looks sensational in the purple-y Caviar Metallic, but not so sure about the XF. Hard to go wrong with British Racing Green, right? Indeed. Make it so.
Onto options then. Adaptive headlights? Nope. Heated windshield? Live in Southern California. 20-inch all-season tires? Ditto. Sport Interior Pack? Nope, it would make everything black. Power rear sunshade. Nah. Split-fold rear seat. Yes, I'd like that please. Meridian surround sound audio system for $2,300. I'm not that impressed with our XF's base system, so I'll step up. Adaptive cruise control? Um, no.
Onto accessories. I've seen people get the Jaguar leaper for their hood. It looks stupid. Moving on.
So my final tally is $72,425 over a base price of $68,100.
What would you order?
Our long-term Jaguar XF doesn't exactly have a Sport Mode, like many sedans do these days. Instead the Jaguar offers Dynamic Mode, which doesn't do anything to change the car's suspension, throttle or steering systems, but it does loosen up the Jag's stability and traction control systems to put more control in the hands of its driver.
DSC is still on, it's just not as intrusive when the pace quickens. According to the Jaguar's owner's manual, "Dynamic Mode co-ordinates the vehicle's control systems to deliver a high performance driving experience. This setting enhances key vehicle systems so that the vehicle's full potential can be exploited. The vehicle's responses are aimed at involving the driver more in focused and purposeful driving, helping swift progress."
I like that, swift progress.
The checkered flag on the instrument cluster tells you Dynamic Mode is on. When it's activated, and the transmission is in Sport and Manual mode, the 6-speed also changes. It now will hold a gear indefinitely. Upshifts are completely controlled by the driver. As the owner's manual states, "The transmission will not change up automatically, even when the rev limit is reached."
Also cool.
But the best part about the Jag's Dynamic Mode is that it stays on, even after the car's ignition is cycled. Every other car I can think of defaults to Whimp Mode as soon as the car is turned off. Not the XF. Dynamic Mode remains selected for six hours.
In other words, you probably need to click it on in the morning, but not after that quick run up to the ATM or after that dinner party.
I like that too.
On Saturday I checked the Jag's tire pressures. They were spot on; 34 psi cold all around. Then I drove the car quite a bit and parked it in my driveway about 4 pm.
When I returned to the car three hours later it told me the right rear tire was flat and it was right. That Dunlop was down to 17 psi.
This morning the XF and I stopped by Stokes Tire Pros in Santa Monica (our go to tire shop) for a fix. Turns out there was a nail in the tire and it was fixable, which was very good news.
Thirty minutes and $30 later we were back on the road.
It's a little hard to see in the photo, so I circled it (poorly) for your convenience. It's a nasty door ding in the driver's side passenger door of our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF, and it's the car's first real blemish.
As you can see it's high on the door, even above the door handle line, which only means one thing; the jerk that did it was climbing out of big, high-riding SUV or crossover.
Well, I believe in Karma. Somewhere, someplace, sometime the universe will make things right.
I like knurls. And they're abundant inside the XF. These two roller swithes on the steering wheel have them.
So does the...
It's possible I'm a wimp, but I don't think so.
It was about 50 degrees outside two nights ago (photo shot later) when I decided to activate the XF's
digit-melting device
steering wheel heater.
I turned it off about five minutes later when the heat it was producing became aproximately equivalent to that of a red giant star.
Won't do that again.
That right there is my face (and a bit of my leg). I stumbled across this handsome devil while, for the 9,000th time, scrolling through the photos of Kurt and I'strip to Alaska in our Long Term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged.
Good thing, too, because I forgot about this annoying feature of our Jag. Look closely at my face. No, not the bags under my eyes or my poor beard-growing ability, look at the light shining almost directly into my eyes.
Fun, right?
Unfortunately that's not from Kurt's equipment, any of our bling or some mirrored sports car being driven by a pop star. No, that's coming off of the gear-selector knob in the Jag. I already don't like the parlor-trick pop-up feature, this just makes it worse. We ended up having to drape a shirt or hat over it at least once a day.
Not cool, Jag, not cool. Follow the jump to see what it looks like when not trying to blind the driver.
The XF's dome lights are awesome. They can be turned on and off by passing your finger near their surface. No hunting for switches in the dark. You don't even have to touch them.
Video after the jump.
In the video it looks like I'm touching the lights, but you don't need to. Just pass your hand below the light and it turns on or off.
Nice.
I spent the holiday weekend holding this button down...
...so that on Monday the XF would let me do this.
Maybe they're button-holding enthusiasts over there at Jaguar, I don't know. But given that I had to hold the stability control button all weekend before I could do a burnout, this shouldn't surprise anyone.
I'll be honest, this isn't a big deal. But every time I jump into the Jag I push the button and wonder what I did wrong. Then I hold the button.
If I had to guess, I'd say we can thank Jag's legal counsel for this one, too.
Hey, at least this thing is awesome in nearly every way that actually matters.
Yesterday Jaguar launched the XFR-S at the LA Auto Show. Along with its 550-hp supercharged V8 and 8-speed ZF transmission came a launch film that's worth watching.
Want.
Hard to argue with the exhaust note. Or the mountain pass.
We're currently being treated to a rare Southern California event. Rain. If it weren't for our allotted couple days of precipitation, I wouldn't have discovered the following.
The windshield wiper stalk in the Jag operates a little differently than most other cars. In other cars, when you pull the stalk back towards you (like you would if you were using the "flash-to-pass" headlights on the other stalk), you'd activate the wiper fluid jets. In the Jag, you get a single pass of the wipers with no fluid.
I like this. Normally, when I'd request a single wiper pass by moving the stalk up or down, I'd mistakenly drop it into intermittent mode. In light rain, I use the single pass wiper function way more often than the washers. The washers on the XF are activated by the chrome button on the end, by the way.
I know, it's a relatively insignificant feature, but the Jaguar does it right, and I think it's worth calling out.
As far as driving the XF Supercharged in the rain, well, let's just say traction control was working overtime. There's a lot of torque at the driver's disposal, and this is one time that I'm glad I left it on. Had I had the opportunity to take it to my super-secret wet skidpad, I'm sure I'd be singing a different tune.
Our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF is a popular car around the Edmunds offices, and deservedly so. It is hard to pass up a combination of great looks, a powerful V8, and a lavish interior.
The Jag hit the 15,000-mile mark in just six months. Driving to Alaska and back definitely helped us reach this milestone faster than usual.
These 15,000 miles have arrived without any major issues, despite what you hear about Jaguar reliability. Still, we'll knock on wood just in case.
We anticipate this car will go way past the annual 20,000-mile goal we set for all the long-term cars.
NHTSA has not crash tested the Jaguar XF. However, its European equavalent, the European New Car Assment Programme (EuroNCAP) has. Its standards and ratings aren't the same at the NHTSA, but they're similar enough that you can get a good feel for how the XF would perform in NHTSA testing.
Gnarly slo-mo destruction of the stunning sedan after the jump.
Go here to see how the XF rates according to EuroNCAP.
I can't be the only one to have noticed this, maybe just the first to blog on it. Are the odd-numbered MPH intervals a Jaguar thing? I wouldn't know because I've never bothered to care about Jaguars. But the XF makes me care. It makes me want to read books about Jaguars, both the brand history and the animal.
I want to help fund some start-up company just so it can develop better cell phone speakers so I can record and accurately reproduce in a ringtone the way the XF rumbles on start-up. I want to create a designer drug that reproduces the sensation of the XF's smooth, linear, unphased power delivery, unwound as naturally as asking Usain Bolt to run down to the store for a six-pack. This car is like that friend that always charmed your parents, but also made them worry. Definitely one of my favorites in the fleet.
I don't see a whole lot of Jaguar XFs on the road, especially in comparison to typical midsize luxury sedan picks like the BMW 5 Series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class. And from a car shopping standpoint, there have been some pretty valid reasons for that in years past. But I'm glad we have this 2012 XF in the fleet as spending time with it makes me think more people would be wise to consider it.
The 2012 model received some worthwhile upgrades (refreshed styling, new seats and an updated touchscreen interface) while the 2013 Jaguar XF gets available all-wheel drive for the first time plus new, more fuel efficient engine options.
Even more important to me: while one car is by no means indicative of the whole line, it's worth noting that our long-termer has been very reliable these past six months and 15,000 miles. That's a welcome contrast to the rather poor reputation for reliability the XF earned in prior years. I had expectations for our car spending a lot of time at the Jaguar dealership, but so far that's not been the case at all.
Captain Obvious here: our Jaguar XF's 470-horsepower V8 is really addicting. The effortless power and crackling exhaust note it produces are probably my favorite qualities about the car. Yet I wonder if I'd actually pay to get the Supercharged XF if I were paying my own money.
I was thinking about this recently when I met up with an acquaintance. He recently bought a new Audi A6. He got the A6's 2.0-liter four-cylinder rather than the supercharged V6, largely because of the $8,200 price increase. It just wasn't worth it to him.
For the 2013 XJ, you're looking at $46,975 for the new base XF, $50,000 for the new 3.0-liter V6 or $68,100 for the V8 Supercharged. Granted, you get a lot of extra standard features with the Supercharged compared to the 3.0 model (about $10,000 worth), but it's still a big increase, with features you may or may not want.
This is a quandary faced by most shoppers of luxury sedans where there are multiple engines. But I think it's even harder for the XF since the supercharged V8 has so much desirable personality to it.
Since I personally don't have the cash reserves to support an XF purchase of any sort, it's all theoretical. But I'll finish by saying if you're looking at an XF as a sport sedan, the Supercharged model is worth the extra cost.
One of the qualities I like about the Jaguar XF is that it's not easily confused with another Jaguar product. There's some design commonality between the XF and the larger XJ, of course, but you're never going to confuse the two when you spot a Jag on the road.
In contrast, the Audi A6 and A8, due to their very similar look, can be hard to tell apart from just a quick glance. So can the BMW 5 Series and 7 Series.
I also like the styling updates Jaguar made for 2012. The front-end looks sleeker now, and the rear of the car, while more subtle, is tidier and incorporates LED taillights.
A recent bout of rain in Southern California (I know, the horror!) plus news of big storms pummeling the Midwest during the holidays had me thinking about our rear-wheel-drive Jaguar XF. Specifically: would I prefer to have all-wheel drive?
From the XF's debut, Jaguar has been making the decision for you — the car has been available with rear drive only. But changes for the 2013 XF as all-wheel drive becomes available for the first time. As a shopper, now you have to decide if all-wheel drive is worth the extra cost, complexity and reduced fuel efficiency.
I think the decision largely rests on the clime of where you live, and how often you drive. In the wet conditions I've been driving the XF in, I can think of only one time where AWD would have been nice — I needed to accelerate quickly on a city street, but our XF's supercharged V8 quickly overwhelmed the rear tires on the wet road. For Southern California, AWD isn't needed or even really wanted.
But the story could be different if I lived somewhere where it snows or freezes frequently. Say, like Denver. Or Perth. Then I think AWD would be worth it to me.
The good thing is that for 2013 XF, you finally get the choice.
Like most luxury sport sedans with automatic transmissions, the Jaguar XF has a Sport mode for its six-speed auto. It's easily selected by turning the rotary gear dial clockwise from "D" to "S."
Sport mode does make a noticeable difference. Throttle response is sharper, and individual gears are held longer before upshifts. The transmission will also downshift into a lower gear when slowing, thereby keeping engine rpm higher. This latter attribute is nice during cornering, as it makes the supercharged V8's power delivery all the more immediate. Not that you're exactly lacking with 470 horsepower on tap, of course.
There's just one thing I'm not really fond of, and that's the quality of the downshifts, particularly when manually selecting gears using the paddle shifters. The transmission does "rev-match" for downshifts, bringing engine rpm up for a downshift to help smooth out the shift. But for some reason it doesn't do all that great of a job with this. The downshifts aren't smooth enough for this class of car, and feel rather jerky at times.
I'm hoping that the 2013 Jaguar XF, with its new eight-speed automatic, will be better in this regard.
There are many forms of the so-called "sport" button. Some are buried so as not to encourage enthusiastic driving. Others are right there on the steering wheel, but with odd markings that don't necessarily hint at what they do. On our XF, you get this button.
No words, no esoteric symbols, just a waving checkered flag that pretty much sums up its mission. Surprisingly, the XF's "Dynamic" mode isn't as comprehensive as some others in this class as it mostly adjusts the parameters of the XF's traction and stability control systems along the shift points. But it makes a difference and it's easy. Just punch the button and you're done. It even stays on after you turn off the car briefly. Such simplicity seems so obvious and yet so many others get it wrong, or simply make it too complicated. This is not one of them.
During the month of December we drove our supercharged 2012 Jaguar XF about 1,500 trouble-free, very enjoyable miles. During those four weeks the sedan averaged 16.7 miles per gallon of 91 octane premium.
That's right in line with the 17.5 mpg we've averaged over the car's 16,447 miles and with the Jag's 17 mpg combined EPA rating.
That box is exactly 16.5 inches tall and as you can see I can just squeeze it through the very center of the Jaguar's trunk opening. I think this is a problem.
There's much more space in the XF's trunk than you can utilize at times because of the sedan's small trunk opening. Stuff will fit in the Jag's trunk, but too often I find myself unable to get the object in the trunk so I can use the available space.
Just a few weeks ago my wife asked me to put a box of Halloween decorations in the trunk of the Jag. It was a much larger box than the one in the photo. I could see that the box would fit in the XF's trunk, but it was just too large to get through its puny trunk opening.
How did I solve the problem? Simple, I put it in the trunk of my mother-in-law's Hyundai Genesis sedan instead.
When backing our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged at an angle into my driveway this weekend, I heard a sound that's familiar to convertible owners: That twisting, creaking sound where the top meets the header of the windshield. But our Jag is a sedan and the noise comes from the sunroof.
Once noticed, I began hearing it on every driveway taken at an angle. I searched the internet and while there isn't a related recall or even technical service bulletin, I did find that this is a familiar trait to the XF and owner forums are filled with this same observation. Is the chassis really so flexible, or does the sunroof gasket simply need a little silicone? The consensus seems to fall to the latter.
I was expecting to have to wedge the card table behind the front seats, but popped the trunk just to confirm my suspicion. I should have seen Mike Monticello's post on the capacity of the Jag's trunk, but it is rather large. At 17.7 cubic-feet, the Jaguar XF's "boot" is, in fact, one of the largest in its class. Lesson learnt.
Here's a poorly lit photo — a poor photo period, actually — that offers some perspective on how far the Jag's seat does not actually recline. A subsequent photo from another angle shows it a little better. The point, however, is that you will not do the layback in the Jag. Not much anyway. No long arm reaching from beyond the B-pillar, just your Yankees cap showing over the beltline. That's not at all British and you won't be doing it in this Cat.
Meanwhile, check out the butt dimples forming in the driver's seat. Granted, I'd only removed my dumpy ass from the seat minutes before, but that leather's definitely wearing a little loose. That's some indication of how much and how fast we like this car. We've put nearly 10,000 miles on it since June, in addition to the 7,000 miles that Mike and Kurt racked up on the Alaskan round-trip.
Let's put the trunk of our 2012 Jaguar XF to the test. We have a BOB running stroller. These things aren't exactly known for their compact dimensions. Sometimes it's a challenge to stuff BOB into the trunk of a car and expect to fit anything else with it. So will the stroller fit?
The XF trunk opening is rather narrow. It took a little finesse to slide the folded stroller into the cargo area. But it is surprisingly deep. I put that sledge hammer in there so its yellow handle could give some gauge of the depth. There is still plenty of room to spare. The XF trunk gets a passing grade in my book.
Yesterday I had to take my dog Mya to the vet again. I figured I'd take her there in style at least. The backseat of our 2012 Jaguar XF has those protruding seatbelt fasteners that I like since they make it easier to buckle in a squirming dog quickly.
The morning was so cold that poor Mya was shivering while she was waiting to get in the car so I made sure to aim the rear-seat vents her way as I blasted on the heater. Not sure if she liked the warm air, though, as she kept fidgeting. The backseat also has a couple of storage options for doggy paraphernalia like the seatback pockets and a door cubby.
Not sure if she enjoyed the Jag's luxuriousness but I like to think that it tricked her into thinking she was actually going somewhere cooler than the vet's office.
This morning as I was leaving for work, I had to jump out of our 2012 Jaguar XF to lock up the driveway gate behind it. Across the street, a neighbor getting out of his work truck waved and said, "I like your car. How does it drive?" But before I could answer, he said, "I bet it drives like a dream, huh?" All I could do was nod while sizing him up. Funny, he didn't look old enough to have been alive during the '50s.
I dunno, something about that description "drives like a dream" struck me as antiquated. I think of big, floaty Caddies. But nowadays, what DO people say to describe how well a car drives? I remember in 1990's Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts described a Lotus Esprit as cornering "like it's on rails." They don't STILL say that either, do they?
I will say that the XF's power is so smooth that it's too easy to get into extra-legal speeds. Woo hoo!
Jumping into and out of so many different cars, it's hard to get used to the quirks of certain cars. And one thing that always throws me off is the autolamp feature. Sometimes they stay on so long after I lock up the car that I'm not sure if I left the lights on or if it just happens to have a long delay. And I stand there waiting until the lights go out. I don't want to be THAT person who let the battery die after all.
Well, imagine my glee when I saw the autolamp delay option on our 2012 Jaguar XF. The headlight stalk can be turned to set the delay to 30 seconds, a minute or even TWO minutes. Naturally I just turned it to "Off." This might not be a big deal to many people but I thought it was a thoughtful detail. By the way, who would set the delay to two minutes anyway?
I just took my first drive in our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged, even though we've had this car for over six months and 17,000 miles. I've driven an XF before, but it has been years, and there have been many A6, 5 Series and E-Class sedans in between and they've shaped my opinion of what a midsize luxury sedan should be in 2013.
Driving the Jaguar takes me back to an earlier time. It feels truly midsize from the driver seat. And I feel like any input I make behind the wheel will elicit a reasonably direct response from the car.
It just has to be smaller and lighter than the latest incarnations of the German sedans. That's what I thought and I was totally wrong.
It's built on pretty much the same scale as the 5 Series, and unlike the XJ, its unit-body is steel, so curb weight is similar to the 550i, which is to say they both weigh just over two tons. A comparison with the A6/S6 or E-Class yields the same result.
Yet, the XF feels so much more alive, maybe because it still has hydraulic-assist power steering or because I don't feel like I have to mess with its adaptive damping to fine-tune its ride quality. It doesn't have a plush ride, mind you, but at least it's honest. It's not trying to insulate me from my decision to drive around in a sedan with (unnecessarily large) 20-inch wheels.
I've complained that the current 5 Series is too isolating, so if I was going to buy a midsize luxury sedan right now, I'd have to put my money where my mouth is: And that means I'd buy a Jaguar XF or an E39 5 Series. I'd pay more up front for the Jag but would have to do plenty of reconditioning on the old BMW. Either way, I'd end up with a sedan that looks good in my driveway and that I'd enjoy driving every day.
We put 1,548 miles on our 2012 Jaguar XF in the month of January. That supercharger can really takes its toll on fuel economy if you let it. But it sure makes the car fun to drive.
Our month with the XF was trouble free as it ran its usual commuting duties. The XF averaged 16.45 mpg during January and drank 94.454 gallons of 91 octane premium.
January's numbers are a little short of the 17.6 mpg we've averaged over the car's 17,791 miles and the Jaguar's 17 mpg combined EPA rating. But after all of those miles our XF is still slightly ahead of the EPA estimate as you will see below.
Worst Fill MPG: 9.2 mpg
Best Fill MPG: 28.5
Average Lifetime MPG: 17.6
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 15 city/21 highway/17 combined
Best Range: 375.9 miles
Current Odometer: 17,191 miles
My husband and I were at the hardware store over the weekend, and on the spur of the moment, we decided to drop $20 on an 8-foot roll of Astroturf for the family dog's outdoor play area. No problem, I thought, our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged has a folding rear seat.
Wrong.
As on nearly all midsize luxury sedans, a folding rear seat is an option on the XF (and, predictably, it's bundled with a bag for skis). Since our long-termer doesn't have that $600 add-on, it doesn't have so much as a center pass-through. Those green Xs denote where the release levers would be if it did have this option.
As a result, this happened.
For sure, this is the least dignified moment in the Jag's life up to now, save for maybe the time it drove through an indeterminate swill of diesel fuel, stagnant water and mud at various off-brand rural gas stations on the road home from Alaska.
Thing is, for several minutes, I labored under the hope that the Jag did actually have a folding rear seat. The seat-back cushions themselves are already pre-divided into 60/40 sections, and there is actually a cut-out in the trunk for the pass-through. No doubt, most Jaguar XF owners (and I saw two over the weekend, and we nodded to each other in acknowledgement of our beautiful and rare sedans) are not making spontaneous trips to Home Depot on a Saturday night. Still, this is a big car, and sometimes a little extra utility is nice to have, so I'd consider the folding seat option $600 well spent.
After four days in our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged, I might have to back away from my earlier statements. Going into the weekend, I was all enthusiastic about the Jag's livelier feel compared to the current 5 Series and E-Class, and I complimented its suspension calibration, which doesn't try to isolate you from what's happening on the road.
But during the weekend, I took some different freeways and different surface streets than I normally do, and over these particular roads, our XF's Dunlop SP Sport Maxx summer tires, sized 255/35ZR20 in front and 285/30R20 in the back) were tough to take. They crashed over impacts large and small. The ride was so busy, my passenger started to get motion sick.
Back on my normal route this morning, the XF rode acceptably once more, so I don't know what conclusion to draw from this experience other than that are better places to drive than the east side of Los Angeles County.
Also, it would be nice if you could get smaller wheels on the XF Supercharged, which comes standard with these particular tires (although Pirelli and Continental versions are also in circulation). Base trim XF sedans can be fitted with 18- or 19-inch wheels, but they aren't staggered-width like these 20s, and so they'd probably look ridiculously small and skinny on an XF with a 470-horsepower, supercharged 5.0-liter V8.
The fact that I'm even expecting a car with this much horsepower to ride compliantly shows you how far we've come in 2012. Here's a huge luxury sedan that blasts through the quarter-mile in 12.6 seconds at 112.8 mph, and I'm expecting it to be as cushy as a car that runs a 15- or 16-second quarter. I'm spoiled, going on delusional, and there's a Camry LE with my name on it.
Nifty as the Jag's rotating vent doors look on ignition, to me they just represent expensive repair bill for the second or third owner when those hidden servos give up. Fortunately, you can turn off the function and lock the doors open. The look isn't as modern cool or austere as when they're closed, but I'll take a busier dash-look than an austere wallet most times.
Probably just like you, I prefer an even spread of dashboard lighting at night. I also prefer to dim the nav screens so they don't distract me from the road. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any sort of lighting adjustment for the Jaguar's infotainment screen.
I searched multiple times through all the on-screen menus to no avail. All I could get was the typical Day/Night/Auto setting. I adjusted the main dashboard lighting dial, and that managed to dim the screen to acceptable levels, but then the rest of the controls were too dark to read. This seems like an odd oversight for a car that seems to have everything else.
The fuel door on the right side of the Jaguar XF is one of those push-it-to-pop-it-open types. But it won't open if the car is locked. It only pops open if you have pressed the unlock button on the keyfob.
I only notice these types of security issues because I grew up in a neighborhood where people fought over parking spots as if the sidewalk was their personal property. Some of the crazies would actually put sugar in your gas tank if you parked in front of their house.
It didn't help that my family had four cars. So, even though I am a long way from that old neighborhood, I appreciate the added security of a locked fuel door. Go, Philly.
If you're not careful when you put your foot down on the accelerator in our long-term Jaguar XF you can take off like a jackrabbit. Its 5.0-liter supercharged V8 is always ready even when you're not.
It packs 470 horsepower @ 6,000 rpm and 424 pound-feet of torque at 2,500 rpm. There's also a lot of midrange muscle on standby for passing and merging onto highways. It's a pleasure to drive when you get a bit of open road. I think I'm obsessed. So much so that I've chosen it from our list of cars for more than a week now. I can't get enough of its smooth power delivery and luxuriously elegant interior.
As a consequence though, the XF Supercharged drinks premium fuel faster than our editors can knock back a double latte.
It's been cool and drippy here. It's sunny there. There's work here. There's a spa there. Time for a road trip to Arizona. I've paired the phone and mapped the route in the Jaguar XF. (Though the directions are largely, "Drive for 379 miles and then stop," so I'm not sure that was totally necessary.)
I'll report back on the Jag's manners as a traveling companion in a few days.
We're bound for a long weekend in Phoenix. And on a two-lane stretch of Interstate 10, right about the time it begins its climb to Chiriaco Summit and the trucks start clogging the lanes, we really begin to appreciate the Jaguar's power plant.
The difficulty in this car is not getting the boost you need to pass. It's keeping yourself in check once the road opens up again. The Jaguar is content to lope along at about 90 mph, and it's all too easy to find yourself there without realizing it. Cruise control isn't a convenience in this car. It's a necessity, particularly if you want to avoid a speeding ticket. It doesn't ruin the fun. Too much.
Before we hit the road, we reveled in the fact that we didn't have to be up at dawn, in an airport, taking off our shoes and displaying our Baggies of toiletries. And because we wouldn't be charged $40 for a second bag, we each got a suitcase. That means there was no second-guessing about how many pairs of shoes a woman needs for a five-day trip. (It's five, right?) Once the suitcases were loaded, there was cargo room to spare in the Jaguar's trunk for our technology duffle, a briefcase and laptop case.
In honor of my father-in-law, who loads up his car like the pioneers loaded Conestogas, we called this packing approach the Full Stanley. I'm afraid I could get used to it.
One of the outings we made in Phoenix was to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home, studio and school of architecture. You can just see it in this photo, since Wright wanted it to blend into the desert landscape and only be visible when you were virtually on top of it.
The Jaguar is its own case study in the art of balancing subtlety and statement. Particularly in black, it's not at all showy from afar. But hit the self-leveling xenon HID headlamps and it shines. You can't miss the grill, which is distinctive and contemporary without being a gaping metal maw. And then there is its soundtrack: a growly V8, 470-hp engine. That's about all the statement you need, really.
Frank Lloyd Wright loved cars, and I think he would have liked to see our Jaguar parked in the forecourt of Taliesin West. But if it were his car, he would almost certainly have had it painted in Cherokee Red. (The color later morphed into one known as Taliesin Orange, and you can see it on the door in the photo above.)
Wright had his 1949 Lincoln Continental done up in the color, as well as his Crosley Super Roadster and his 1929 Cord L-29. He was fond of the Cord, he said, because "It looked becoming to my houses." We think the Jaguar becomes his desert home as well.
The valets at the Arizona Biltmore really, really liked our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged. During our stay there, the Jaguar routinely got a front-row parking space, so we never had to wait more than a minute or two for it. I don't think it was just luxury-brand snob appeal, either. The car is beautiful in its own right and fits in with the Biltmore's theme of low-key elegance.
We had loaded up the Jaguar for our return trip on a Sunday morning and were 40 minutes out of town when we realized we were in a valet's worst nightmare: There, in a center compartment of the console was not only our key fob, but someone else's keys, too. A Lexus owner was about to be very, very unhappy.
We called the Biltmore's valet station and told the manager that we were on our way back, declining his offer to dispatch someone to meet us somewhere. Too complicated. I described the key and its silver Tiffany heart-shaped charm. He knew exactly who the owner was: a regular. With any luck, she was still brunching.
The back-track added more than an hour to our trip, but we weren't on a tight schedule. And sometimes it's good to make a deposit in the universal favor bank.
Overall, the navigation system in the Jaguar was a big help during a road trip to Phoenix. There were some glitches, however. Once, the system wouldn't let us set a restaurant as the destination. It didn't recognize the address as existing on that street, and I have no idea why. We bailed out and used Google Maps on a smartphone. (The "unnamed road" message shown here was no big deal, by the way. As with most systems, it's indicating a parking lot or the odd connector ramp.)
On two other occasions, the system's turn-by-turn voice commands (hereafter known as Miss Guided) went haywire. The first time it happened, I was alone and headed to my first visit to the Desert Botanical Garden. It was a perfect navigation test: a solo traveler headed someplace she'd never been.
About halfway through the trip, Miss Guided told me to make a right turn. Since I was on a freeway at the time, an actual right turn wasn't an option. There was an off-ramp to my right, however, so I took it, even though I instinctively knew I shouldn't.
I was now in a somewhat sketchy part of town, with no botanical garden in sight. The next guidance was to get back on the freeway, going the way I'd been going. Weird.
When the next few excursions went off without a hitch, I began thinking that the detour was my fault, that I'd heard the directions wrong. But then it happened again, and this time, I had a witness. My husband was driving and as we exited the freeway, Miss Guided regurgitated the exact turn she'd given a few minutes before. It sounded like an old-fashioned record skip.
We ignored her. Her next directions were spot-on, but we gave Miss Guided the night off anyway.
In our test fleet, there are cars that you can't wait to get out of, and cars you would drive every day if some other needy editor wasn't pushing you out of the way.
The Jaguar XF Supercharged definitely falls in the second category. Glancing at the odometer this morning, I noticed the XF was nearing 20,000 miles. That's a milestone in our business, and the minimum mileage we try to put on all our cars during a 12-month period.
When I got on the freeway, I thought maybe I should just spend the day driving, get the XF up to the 20K mark. Then I realized it was still 800 miles away, and that would be at least 11 hours of driving.
Somehow, in the XF Supercharged, it still sounded like a reasonable idea.
Just playing with Vine. Do you think it's possible to review a car in six seconds?
We put 1,602 miles on our 2012 Jaguar XF in the month of February, mostly during Carroll's road trip to Phoenix. She earned an average of 17.6 mpg in February which exactly matches our average for the lifetime of this XF Supercharged. And is slightly better than the EPA estimate of 17 mpg for this car.
Outside of a few navigation hiccups, our month with the XF was trouble free. The Jaguar XF burned through 91.607 gallons of 91 octane premium fuel during the shortest month of the year.
Worst Fill MPG: 9.2 mpg
Best Fill MPG: 28.5
Average Lifetime MPG: 17.6
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 15 city/21 highway/17 combined
Best Range: 375.9 miles
Current Odometer: 19,317 miles
As you can see in the photo above, our Jaguar has a digital speedometer in the center of the instrument panel as well as the traditional dial on the left.
You can scroll through this digital display to show trip miles, range, fuel economy, etc. But I like to keep it on MPH. I find that when a digital speedometer is available I seldom look at the traditional dial. I like that the read-out is in the center and displays a simple number.
My only wish is that I was traveling faster than 1 mph.
Which type of speedometer do you prefer?
Our Jaguar XF is running a few minutes behind real time. I can't have the clock telling me I have three more minutes than I actually have. Time is important.
So, I looked in the manual to see if there was some super special premium Jaguar way to adjust the clock. But the only mention of the clock was how to clean the screen.
So, I touched the time with my finger and voila. The clock settings came right up.
Now we'll see if the XF adjusts itself automatically to Daylight Saving Time on Sunday.
On a side note, if you look at the vent in the picture above, you can see the word "Jaguar" written on the vent adjuster. I love little details like this.
In my last report, I told you how easy it was to update the time in our 2012 Jaguar XF. Our clock was off by a few minutes.
Over the weekend, we lost an hour due to Daylight Saving Time but our Jaguar didn't. So, I manually took it back by using the same method as before.
Just press the time and adjust the hour.
Light-colored leather tends to age faster than a party girl with a tanning addiction. However, though our Jag's been with us for roughly 10 months now (its year ends this June), the pale-brown hide that sheaths its handsomely sculpted seats are none the worse for wear. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that they look pretty much as good as new.
The same can be said for the rest of the car's interior, which has held up admirably under the challenges of accommodating our editorial team. The best kind of luxury is luxury that lasts.
We had a kumbaya moment over the weekend when we came across this red 2013 Jaguar XF 2.0 Turbo while driving our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged long-termer.
So of course we just had to park appropriately for a photo of the two cats together.
One thing we know: We'll take the 470-horsepower rocket of a V8 in our long-termer any day. Sometimes, fuel economy be damned. The immediate thrust of the XF Supercharged is pure awesomeness.
Sometimes I get shocked at the pathetic excuses for cupholders manufacturers put in their cars. Case in point, the 2013 Ford Focus ST, which I complained about in an update recently. Take any turn, at any speed, and your water bottle is going for a ride across the car.
Then you get into the 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged. And you realize, this is how cupholders are done right. It all comes down to anti-tip technology, also known as those flexible but very grippy rubber protrusions.
I tried a couple of different water bottle sizes, and they stayed properly in place.
For those of you who swill back 8.4 oz cans of Red Bull, well, Jag thought of you, too, with that small holder in the center.
So, how come so few get it right? It just doesn't seem that difficult.
Sometimes it's nice to have some heat on your back, especially during a long drive when things can get a little stiff. The downside with heated seats is that although you'd like some back heat, you most certainly do not need butt heat. With a vast majority of cars, that's the reality.
Not so with Jaguar, as well as many GM vehicles off the top of my head. If you press the "Seat Zone" button, it turns off the butt zone and instead focuses the heat on the back section.
This is an excellent feature and I wish more cars offered it.
After so much time spent in our Jaguar XF Supercharged, I was curious to see what it was like when you removed half its cylinders and nearly half the horsepower in the new base 2.0 model.
Though its 0-60 time of around 8 seconds may be unimpressive, in practice I found this 240-horspower turbocharged four-cylinder to provide plenty of punch for this heavy midsize sedan. Its 251 pound-feet of torque is more than ample enough for journeys around town and gets off the line with authority. You can even get the traction control to say hello when powering around corners. However, it runs out of steam on the high end, resulting in that slower 0-60 time and a power delivery that's almost diesel-like.
In the end, the XF 2.0 doesn't feel slow. It just makes our Supercharged feel hilariously overpowered.
I've found something very un-Jaguaresque in our XF's cabin.
Although the wheel-like rocker switches on the Jaguar XF's steering wheel feel good and are nicely weighted, they make a loud thunk noise when you use them to adjust the stereo volume or channel. Not just a light click, but a thunk.
It's a small thing, but every time I use it I wonder how that noisy switch made it through Jaguar's product planning department.
How many Jaguar XF owners are likely to use their cars to ferry a load of dirt and mulch?
Probably not many, but here's a quick photo to prove that you don't have to baby your Jag, you just might need to vacuum it when you're done.
Our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged didn't rack up that many miles in March. A steady diet of commuting in Southern California held it to 1,353 miles. Our 470-horsepower luxury sedan broke 20,000 miles this month, though, and it might surprise you to learn that its lifetime average exactly matches its EPA combined fuel economy rating.
That's right. The EPA rates our V8 sedan at 15 mpg in the city, 21 on the highway and 17 combined. And through 20,670 miles, the Jag is averaging 17.3 mpg. And that's rather impressive when you consider how much performance this car offers.
The Jag's average fuel economy for the month of March fell short of its lifetime average, however, no doubt due to stop-and-go traffic in greater L.A. The XF Supercharged averaged 15.6 mpg over those 1,353 miles.
Worst Fill MPG: 9.0 mpg
Best Fill MPG: 28.5 mpg
Average Lifetime MPG: 17.3 mpg
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 15/21/17
Best Range: 375.9 miles
Current Odometer: 20,670 miles
Cars with Alcantara-wrapped A-pillars and headliners don't come through the fleet that often, so I always tend to slightly fixate on the Jag's roof supports after I've slipped behind the wheel. This faux-suede has a rich look and feel, such that its use on the pillars seems silly, extravagant and perfect.
In some ways, our Jag doesn't look like its sticker price. And I love its profile specifically because it doesn't scream "$60,000 car." The acceleration and exhaust note handle that job just fine. But you still want it to feel lux inside, and the furry A-pillars are just one of the details that add up.
Don't tell Ian Callum, but I think our 2012 Jaguar XF's rear end is much more attractive than the new 2013 XJ's boot.
Tell me, which Jag do you think has the better behind?
The other day I was working from home and Tweeting. Yes, Twitter is part of my job. I had our long-term Porsche 911 and I could see on my Twitter feed that Magrath had the Jaguar XF Supercharged. I sometimes hog the Jaguar for a week at a time. I'm sure that makes me real popular around the office. But when the car sign-out board comes around, the 911 is usually spoken for. I rarely get a chance and I jumped on it.
So, here's our Twitter conversation, because an UnTwittered life is not worth living. I think Socrates said that.
Mike Magrath @Mike_Magrath
Getting lunch on Sunset, four Z8s have passed. I love LA.
Donna DeRosa @donnaderosa
@Mike_Magrath But what are you driving?
Mike Magrath @Mike_Magrath
@donnaderosa I'm sitting in a lovely metal chair watching. The Jaaaaaaaaaag is parked.
Donna DeRosa @donnaderosa
@Mike_Magrath My favorite.
Mike Magrath @Mike_Magrath
@donnaderosa more than the 911??
Donna DeRosa @donnaderosa
@Mike_Magrath I think so because I'm old now. But the 911 is pretty sweet. Is that terrible?
Mike Magrath @Mike_Magrath
@donnaderosa ha. Nope, there's a lot to like here...especially the motor.
He's right. There is a lot to like about this Jaguar XF, especially with the Supercharger. But then I got into the Porsche 911 and I instantly felt younger and cooler. It sounds so special. And I can pretend I'm in my twenties again and I have some place to go that's fun and interesting, like lunch on Sunset.
Then I got back into the Jaguar XF last night. The accelerator felt so much looser than the 911's. I had to control my right foot. Porsche adds some much needed resistance to its right pedal so hotshots don't take off into a telephone pole.
Both cars are fantastic. But, kidding aside, now that I'm a little bit older, the luxury hotshot suits me better. And it's much easier to get my weary bones into the driver seat.
This Jaguar XF was ahead of me on the 101 freeway. Not exactly the vanity plate I'd choose for our long-term XF test car, but to each, his own.
What specialized plate would you put on your black cat?
Our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged is the only car in our long-term fleet that will still play my first-generation iPod Touch.
It's not just that it's an old device. I also "upgraded" its software and now even my iHome won't play it. So, congratulations to the Jaguar XF. I love you even more now.
When our long-term Jaguar XF sits in the sun for a while, like in my driveway at home, it develops a certain je ne sais quois, that intangible quality the French use to describe that which we cannot describe. That's my polite way of saying this car gets a little stinky.
There's a lot of leather in this car but leather has a pleasant aroma. I blame the alcantara, which is a polite way of saying fake suede. It gets a little ripe if you know what I mean. It's amazing how earthy an artificial substance can smell.
Discuss.
Compared to its road-trip-latent history, our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged didn't go too far in the month of April: just shy of 1,200 miles. The Jag got plenty of use over the last four weeks and over its lifetime with us, it continues to beat EPA-combined mileage estimates.
Worst Fill MPG: 13.9 mpg
Best Fill MPG: 18.5 mpg
Average Lifetime MPG: 17.3 mpg
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 15/21/17
Best Range: 261.1 miles
Current Odometer: 22,851
One of the main complaints heard from X-wing pilots around the galaxy is the starfighter's lack of space and creature comforts. Fortunately, Jaguar has stepped in with a luxury edition called the XF-Wing.
This four-seat X-Wing variant (three seats if you have your astromech droid in the copilot seat, as pictured above) brings a healthy dose of luxury to a starfighter that was so sorely lacking in comfort. Standard amenities include advanced Bluetooth, which cleans up those pesky garbled sub-space transmissions and plenty of lightsaber holders (which also double as Red Bull holders). Heated seats, hyperdrive, active front and rear shields and a photon torpedo-ready cradle are also included.
Optionally, you can outfit the interior with a nearly endless selection of custom upholstery. Those looking for a bit more personality than the usual Bantha leather can also pick from the increasingly popular Gungan hide, faux-Wookiee headliner and genuine Ewok suede.
An XF-RS-Wing is also rumored to be in the works. Expect it to do the 18-parsec Kessel Run in a mere 11.5 parsecs, since it's able to skirt the Maw black hole cluster without being torn to shreds (see what I did there? You're welcome, Han).
You can't repel comfort of this magnitude, so get into formation and attack that exhaust port in luxury.
I went to the ballet this weekend at Segerstrom Hall. I haven't been to something artistic in a long time. It was Rodin by the Boris Eifman Ballet out of St. Petersburg. It was titled after the sculptor Rodin but was really about Camille Claudel. Look her up; she's a very interesting woman.
The dancers were incredible, especially the lead female dancer. It was a modern ballet, so there were no pointe shoes, no tutus, no Balanchine-style chorus lines waving a rose back and forth. It was sinewy and athletic and truly beautiful.
Those same words can be used to describe the Jaguar XF Supercharged. It was the perfect car to drive to and from such an event.
Our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged has way more personality that most of today's midsize luxury sedans. It's a more interesting car to drive than either our 2011 BMW 528i or 2013 Lexus GS 350.
Of course, the Jag's 470-horsepower, supercharged 5.0-liter V8 has a lot to do with this. The way this engine pulls the car along in traffic is always exciting and feels borderline illegal. You don't ease into the throttle in the XF. You grab great big gobs of it.
Granted, there are plenty of torque-rich turbocharged six- and eight-cylinder engines in this class right now, but many of them lack character. In contrast, this blown V8 makes the Jaguar XF feel and sound fast. Every V8 should do that, at least in this class.
So I always have a good time in our Jaguar XF Supercharged, just like I did in our old Corvette Z06. The problem is that our XF is already full of rattles with 22,000 miles on the odometer, you know, also kind of like an old Corvette.
The midsize luxury sedan class is a play-it-safe part of the market right now. I wouldn't even bring up the XF if a Lexus GS owner asked me what's good in this class. And over the weekend, when the owner of a high-mileage E60 BMW M5 asked me about it, I said, "You'd really enjoy the engine, but now that you've owned a BMW, I think your expectations for quality might be too high."
The thing is, I'm possibly engaging in needless hand-wringing. Nothing major has broken on our XF, and there's no reason to think it will anytime soon. But the rattles coursing through the cabin wouldn't make me feel great if I'd paid close to $70,000 for this car.
I don't find the instrument panel in our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged unattractive. It looks nice enough. But the digits and markings are small. So whenever I get into the XF, the first change* I make is to the trip computer: I scroll past the default odometer /Trip A display and select the digital speedometer display.
It's there under the digitized analog clock display, and it's not large. But for me, this digital speed readout is a less taxing way to monitor my rate of travel and I'm glad it's an option.
*The second change I make is to change the clock to 24-hour time, because that's the way it should be.
I really like the steering wheel in our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged, because it's not what you're expecting.
With a 470-hp, blown V8 under the hood, it stands to reason that the steering wheel would be an ultra-thick-rimmed piece, perhaps with raised portions at 10 and 2 and a dab of paint in the on-center position.
Instead, this slender-rimmed steering wheel is dainty and delicate in my hands. It's such a contrast to the indelicate yank when I floor the throttle in traffic, and I love that.
Some long-term cars leave our garage and I won't even notice. I'm pretty sure it was a month and a half before I realized the Honda Crosstour was gone. There are others, however, where I'll wistfully stand at the driveway and wave as it departs for the last time, a wash of fond memories floating through my mind to the dulcet tones of Barbra Streisand and "The Way We Were."
The 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged fits into the latter category, and as its time with us is coming to a close, I thought I'd share those fond recollections in that age-old, time-tested Top 10 format...though sans Babs.
In no particular order...
10) The power. Oh heavens, the power. So effortless, so smooth, so impossible to not exploit.
9) The sound. Oh heavens, the sound of that power. A lesser XF will have many of the same attributes below, but not that sound.
8) The responsibility. Unlike so many cars now fitted with an eco nanny that retards throttle response, the XF puts all that power at your hands and says, "Have at it, old chap! If you want to burn fuel, go right ahead."
7) The show. As I wrote years ago in my first Jaguar XF Road Test, "The console-mounted start button pulsates like there's a real feline heart beating inside. Pressing it fires the supercharged V8 to life and then, like the curtain rising on La Traviata, lifts the circular gear selector into the driver's palm and rotates the four air vents into place. This is automotive theater that makes Audis, BMWs and Mercedes feel like modernist furniture galleries."
6) The size. It may compete with the A6, 5 Series and E-Class, but it feels like a smaller car. Actually, it is a smaller car on the inside and some will find its back seat to be comparatively cramped. I don't care. That smaller size pays dividends when you're driving it.
5) The left-foot braking. I like to left-foot brake whenever possible. I find it's usually more comfortable for my long legs and it's helpful when driving aggressively. The Jag's pedals are perfectly placed for left-foot braking.
4) The steering. Light in effort, yet responsive and communicative. The wheel is comfortable too.
3) The style. The cabin design is still so special and so classy despite several years on the market. Our two-tone color scheme makes it that much more distinctive with even more interesting schemes available. I'm a particular sucker for the blue dash top. I'm sick of cars only getting black, tan and gray choices. The Jag gives you pages of combos.
2) The reliability. In contrast to the nightmare most people would've expected, nothing significant has broken, fallen off, gone on the fritz or left us stranded 500 miles away from the nearest service station somewhere in Alaska.
1) The tongue-in-cheek bragging. Getting to say, "I drive a Jaaaaaaaag."
I'm sure you've caught on by now that I am smitten with our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged. It works for me on so many levels.
It's comfortable to drive and passengers love it. Its supercharged engine can get you where you want to go quickly. Not only is it fun to drive but its interior is a nice place to be. The air conditioner works well, the audio system accepts my iPod and its navigation system is easy to use and understand.
And when it's waiting for you in a dark parking lot, its courtesy lights guide you to its door handles and make it easy to get away. Although this picture makes this parking lot look pretty shady, it's really a nice place. The Redondo Beach Cafe is the best place in L.A. to watch the Kings and eat Greek food.
As our time with our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF draws to a close, I decided to give the big cat another whirl. I'd not driven this car very much as I just never really warmed up to it. Okay, I definitely warmed up to its barnstorming power delivery, which, save for a minor delay in tip-in throttle response, is terrific. I think my indifference to it stems primarily from its tepid steering and touchy brake pedal response, areas that make the XF seem a bit incohesive or unresolved to me.
Anyway, in the intervening months the Jaguar has developed a few (three, by my count) interior creaks of nonspecific origin. I suppose I could go on rattle patrol to determine their exact source but it seems a futile effort with so little time left in the fleet.
Like a few comments opined, I too would turn off the cabin's silly theatrical elements, which seem to me like problems waiting to happen. But to be fair the actual cabin durability has been, indeed, quite good. It's showing little, if any, wear and all the bits and baubs still function just fine.
Our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged, in its last month in our fleet, didn't rack up that many miles in May. A total of 1,144 miles is all we tallied last month.
The EPA rates our V8 sedan at 15 mpg in the city, 21 on the highway and 17 combined. And through 22,995 miles, the Jag is averaging 17.1 mpg. Not bad for a car this big and quick.
The Jag's average fuel economy for the month of May fell short of its lifetime average, however, no doubt due to stop-and-go traffic in greater L.A. The XF Supercharged averaged 15.4 mpg over those 1,144 miles.
Worst Fill MPG: 9.0 mpg
Best Fill MPG: 28.5 mpg
Average Lifetime MPG: 17.1 mpg
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 15/21/17
Best Range: 375.9 miles
Current Odometer: 22,995 miles
Just as it's about to leave our care for good, our 2012 Jaguar XF began to intermittently display a brake pad warning light. Though it came and went for a few days, we took the car into the Jaguar store in Anaheim Hills, Calif. Our experience was good.
Service writer Jay Kauffman was quick in checking in the XF for an 8:00 a.m. appointment and called us a few hours later to tell us the news: Sure enough, the XF needed new rear pads. We OK'd the service and by midafternoon Jay called again to tell us the car was being washed and would be ready soon.
All told, we are into the rear brakes for $507.72. The breakdown came out to $268.72 for the pads, a sensor and a "brake kit" which amounts to a few springs. Labor was $217.50 and tax was $21.50.
And when we picked up the Jaguar XF it was clean and ready to go. Overall, the service experience was good. Yes, it was expensive. So is the car.
It's also worth it.
We made another discovery at last week's brake pad replacement: That the inside of the Jag's front Dunlops were worn to the cords.
These are the original tires and we've got about 23,000 miles on the car, but the uneven wear seems to indicate an alignment problem, though there are no other symptoms (pulling, wobbly steering wheel, etc.) The SP Sport MAXX rubber turned a maximum of .85g in our testing, which makes it reasonably sticky. Even so, it's surprising that we'd allow a rear-drive car with this kind of power to wear out its front tires quicker than it does its rears.
Seems almost wrong, in fact. But, hey, we just report the facts.
When I was a kid, my father once referred to his Impala SS by saying, "Real hot rods have louvers, flames and five spokes."
If you follow our updates on the 2012 Jaguar XF, you've probably seen a dozen pictures of the Supercharged logo on its hood louvers. Many modern cars have bodywork masquerading as performance-enhancing improvements, but this small touch on the Jag appears to be functional.
I took our supercharged Jaguar XF to the movies last week, and my gearhead friends asked me to open the hood so they could look at the engine bay. Sure enough, the louvers on our Jag actually vent from the engine bay. While I'm not sure exactly how much heat they shed, I'm glad they aren't entirely for show.
Here's a typical weather scene in Southern California. See? Nothing's happening. It's perfectly pleasant and, look, somebody has a 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged to drive.
So it's easy to ignore warning messages like this.
Except that the Jaguar XF doesn't share our cavalier attitude toward seeing out the front of the car. If you want to get rid of that message and have use of the trip computer, you must go over to the main touchscreen on the center stack and clear the warning.
Then, you get five, maybe ten minutes to yourself to use the trip computer as you see fit. And then, the warning comes back. After playing the game for a couple commutes, I overcame a bout of laziness and decided to refill the Jag's windshield washer fluid reservoir. This involved popping the hood.
Nothing about this engine compartment really invites owner involvement, except for that blue cap. And that of course is the cap for the wiper fluid reservoir.
I already had a jug of wiper fluid in my garage. It was the mega-subfreezing-temperatures winter formula I bought for our departed Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 during my Christmas road trip to Colorado. But Jag didn't mind, and the warning extinguished. Minor mini-crisis averted.
Here is the fuel economy update for our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF during the month of June. Its final day in our fleet was June 3. So we accumulated just 216 miles during the month of June. A summary of its lifetime fuel economy follows.
Worst Fill MPG: 9.0
Best Fill MPG: 28.5
Average Lifetime MPG: 17.1
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway/Combined): 15/21/17
Best Range: 375.9 miles
Current Odometer: 23,212
Wrap-Up
What We Got
The 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged had a starting MSRP of $68,100 at the time of this test. Optional equipment began with a short list of interior touches: Jet headliner ($525), piano-black veneer panel treatments ($790) and the interior pack ($1,300), which included highly adjustable sport leather seats and bright-finished pedals. Adaptive headlights with intelligent high beams ($850) were the only options outside of the cabin. All told, our XF arrived with a sticker price of $72,440.
Our new Jaguar XF Supercharged boasted a 5.0-liter supercharged V8 engine that generated 470 horsepower and 424 pound-feet of torque. This engine wasn't available when the XF was first introduced in 2009, so needless to say, this was a notable improvement. A six-speed automatic transmission and rear-wheel drive were standard, along with numerous comfort items like soft-grain leather seats, dual-zone climate control and a 7-inch touchscreen display that was a gateway to its extensive navigation and media interface.
Configured as it was, our XF was about as nice as Jaguar's midsize sedan gets. If it couldn't impress us over the course of a year, nothing with a Jaguar badge would.
Our Impressions
"The front seats in our Jag XF strike a near-perfect compromise between comfort and lateral support. On the first, yes, they're comfortable to the point you don't even think about them, which is always a good sign. As far as lateral support, they're excellent. The seats really hold you in place. And, it's not just the seatbacks that have the good bolstering, as on most cars, but the seat cushions also provide good grip for your legs." — Mike Monticello
"I took the XF to a fancy-schmancy lunch in Malibu in the afternoon, then out to a fancy-schmancy dinner in my neighborhood last night. The Jaguar is exquisite from the inside, with rich leather and an intoxicating blend of stately design and high-tech styling. Honestly, the only thing I'm not a fan of is the steering wheel shape. And then there's the engine. Oh. My. Gawd. It feels like it's got more than 424 lb-ft of twist. When you stomp the throttle, it responds with a flood of power that presses you into the seat. It doesn't shove you violently, no; it's a smooth and graceful wallop that doesn't jostle your innards. Fan-freaking-tastic." — Mark Takahashi
"On the skid pad, with ESC off, the XF finds a delicate, neutral place with mild understeer at the limit. I could have easily wiggled my big toe and made it oversteer.... The XF feels free, frisky and playful. Of course, the temptation is for lurid slides (and it will do that), but the quick way between the slalom cones was to use delicate and precise throttle input to coax a little rotation at each cone and save the uppercut for the exit. I was a little surprised and pleased with how quick, friction-free and precise the steering remained.... There's no need for heavy steering, even in a car with sporting intentions. Even when going slide-ways through the last gate, I always felt in complete control. Nice, predictable behavior, which is more than I can say for current BMW sedans when pushed outside their 8/10ths comfort zones with ESC disabled." — Chris Walton
"That metal-look trim looks textured and sure enough, it is textured when you run your fingers across it. It feels nice and special, and I especially like the contrast between the coarse texture of the trim and the buttery-soft leather above. This mixing of materials in terms of both appearance and texture is very well executed and just one of the many little details that make such a difference in this car." — James Riswick
"Our XF's slow-responding, odd screen-flow-havin' touchscreen is a few generations behind the times and shows the confidence its designers/engineers had in the then-newish technology. The XF's interface would have benefited greatly from the addition of a knob or two. Unfortunately, sometimes the ability to do something (in this case, incorporate many cabin functions into a single touchscreen interface) crowds out the decision of whether you should. I find myself saying this a lot about touchscreens in cars." — Jason Kavanagh
"I feel the need to address the instrument cluster. Specifically its lack of needless complexity. This is how it used to be done before designers and engineers tried to cram every last piece of vehicle information into a limited amount of space in the driver's field of view. Granted, that small screen in the middle lights up with all sorts of user-adjustable information, but it's pretty minimal as modern instrument panels go." — Ed Hellwig
"Our XF has the $850 'Adaptive Front Lights and Intelligent High Beam' option. They're woefully insufficient on seriously dark roads.... There is virtually no edge-lighting and not nearly enough forward light to make good decisions at near-freeway speeds.... You know us well enough to take this next statement seriously: The headlights were so bad we felt unsafe going the speed limit and had to take it down by at least 5 mph as soon as the sun fully set. Thankfully, the sunset was sometime after 10 pm. Still, this annoyance made us change both our plans and our scheduling. No more late-night mileage marathons. As for that automatic high beam thing, it was the first feature we turned off because they kept flicking on and off in reaction to any and every light source." — Mike Magrath
"I like the idea of electronic oil monitors. I like that they can warn you if things are going poorly on the fly. I like that they offer the convenience of checking your oil without getting dirty. I like that it should, ideally, make monitoring your oil level easier and thus help more people to do it more frequently. If only.... With a normal dipstick it takes all of, including washing your hands after, 60 seconds to check your oil. It's ideal to let the engine cool for a bit first.... You can even, gasp, check it on a non-level surface.... The Jag doesn't give you a reading in any of these circumstances.... The second strike against these things is the accuracy.... On Day 1 of our Alaska road trip, the electronic thingamabob said we were A-OK.... Day 3, the oil read good, too. Same for Day 5. On Day 7 we were, all of a sudden, two quarts down. Two quarts!! This wouldn't have happened with a dipstick." — Mike Magrath
"That box is exactly 16.5 inches tall and as you can see I can just squeeze it through the very center of the Jaguar's trunk opening. I think this is a problem. There's much more space in the XF's trunk than you can utilize at times because of the sedan's small trunk opening.... Just a few weeks ago my wife asked me to put a box of Halloween decorations in the trunk of the Jag. It was a much larger box than the one in the photo. I could see that the box would fit in the XF's trunk, but it was just too large to get through its puny trunk opening. How did I solve the problem? Simple, I put it in the trunk of my mother-in-law's Hyundai Genesis sedan instead." — Scott Oldham
"Our long-term 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged has way more personality than most of today's midsize luxury sedans.... The problem is that our XF is already full of rattles with 22,000 miles on the odometer.... I'm possibly engaging in needless hand-wringing. Nothing major has broken on our XF, and there's no reason to think it will anytime soon. But the rattles coursing through the cabin wouldn't make me feel great if I'd paid close to $70,000 for this car." — Erin Riches
Maintenance & Repairs
Regular Maintenance:
The XF called for routine service every 15,000 miles. We paid for an early oil change and tire rotation, as is our policy, which cost $213. It gave us an idea of what to expect when Jaguar's complimentary four-year/50,000-mile scheduled maintenance plan expires. But we don't count this against the car. The record will show $0 for regular maintenance.
We still spent money to keep the XF on the road. A standard flat tire repair set us back $30. Late in our test the rear brake pads required replacement. This $507 fix was the only real expense we incurred. We would have spent more if our test didn't end prior to realizing the front tires were worn to the cords.
Service Campaigns:
The only recall on our vehicle during the test was to replace a fuel tank outlet flange. We took it in, only to find out the repair had already been made on our test car.
Fuel Economy and Resale Value
Observed Fuel Economy:
The EPA estimate for the 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged is 17 mpg in combined driving. Our average after 23,000 miles was just that, 17.1 mpg. The best range on a single tank took us more than 375 miles and averaged 24 mpg, showing the Jaguar could stretch its legs somewhat on the open road. But in everyday city driving, we averaged just over 200 miles between fill-ups.
Resale and Depreciation:
Our 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged started this test a year ago with an MSRP of $72,440. After 23,211 miles Edmunds' TMV® Calculator valued the sedan at $48,788 based on a private-party sale. This marked 33 percent depreciation from its original MSRP.
Summing Up
Pros: Sensational power from the supercharged V8, commendable long-range comfort, exquisite interior detailing, free scheduled maintenance, no unscheduled visits to the dealer.
Cons: Limited fuel range, dated electronics often frustrating to use, some noticeable squeaks and rattles after the 20,000-mile mark, small trunk opening.
Bottom Line: The 2012 Jaguar XF Supercharged is a formidable performance sedan with a unique interior feel that you won't find in one of its German counterparts. Other than a few squeaks and rattles after the 20K mark, the XF was dead reliable and highly desirable.
| Total Body Repair Costs: | None |
| Total Routine Maintenance Costs: | None (over 12 months) |
| Additional Maintenance Costs: | $537.72 for rear brake pads and tire repair |
| Warranty Repairs: | None |
| Non-Warranty Repairs: | None |
| Scheduled Dealer Visits: | 1 |
| Unscheduled Dealer Visits: | 2 for rear brake pads and tire repair |
| Days Out of Service: | 1 |
| Breakdowns Stranding Driver: | None |
| Best Fuel Economy: | 28.5 mpg |
| Worst Fuel Economy: | 9.0 mpg |
| Average Fuel Economy: | 17.1 mpg |
| True Market Value at service end: | $48,788 (private-party sale) |
| Depreciation: | $23,652 (33% of original MSRP) |
| Final Odometer Reading: | 23,211 miles |
The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.