I have been talking with the dealership of a F Type S I am leaning towards purchasing, and found it strange they only offered up an AutoCheck report. I ran a CarFax instead, and saw the following:
12/2016: Body Electrical System checked
12/2016: Engine Electrical System checked
1/2017: Engine Electrical System checked
2/2017: Engine Electrical System checked
4/2018: Body Electrical System checked
All of the comments/service was done at apparently the Jaguar/Land Rover dealership where the original owner purchased the car. Two questions arise:
1. Should I reach out to that service dept. next week and see if they can shed any light on these entries?
2 How much should these comments on a CarFax concern me?

 

​​​​​​It sucks but a perfect carfax is critical to resale value today, so the fact that carfax is unresponsive even when trying to remove mistakes makes this a problem regardless of its meaningfulness, IMO. If you are keeping the car forever its a great thing bcs you can walk out on the deal until they cut the price. If you want to resell someday you need to buy it low enough to compensate for a loss on the back end.

I tried reaching out for info on my first FT and the dealer would not disclose info over the phone because its too hard to verify you are the new owner. They said I could come in and disscuss it but they were 1500 miles away.

 

I can understand why for privacy reasons they may not want to disclose, however, from a potential buyer perspective, I have not seen (and I have run 6 on my own CarFax account) that many "engine electrical system" notations on a car. Just earlier this afternoon, I spotted a 2017 F Type Premium that just came off lease that has only one mention of the "engine electrical system" check, it also has less than 11k miles and is a CPO for a little more than $2500 than the first S trim I mentioned in this post.

 

There is definitely no shortage of electrical checks and software reloads on Jag carfaxes. Personally I would view it as a good thing for price leverage, since most electrical flukes are battery problems.

I'm not sure if the discontinuation of the V6 in the US will help or hurt V6 prices. My guess is the discontinuation of Jaguar is coming soon, anyway.

 

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd suspect the owner plugged something into the OBDC port leading to the battery running down. This is a known issue. Most (by my own experience) devices cause this, leading to a low battery warning and requiring a battery module reset (disconnecting the battery for a few seconds).

 

Any dealer can go into DCS & look @ DDW to see what warranty repairs have been performed. Try going to your local dealer with the vin. Ask if they will look at warranty history for you.

 

yup...almost certainly these are checks that relate to perceived defects (and "perceived" is the operative word) which in all liklihood were caused by an undercharged battery - on these cars, because of their common pattern of use (which means too little and too infrequent) the batteries are often at less than full charge and the result of that is random electronic symptoms. This plays beautifully into the myth of "unreliable Jaguars". If you were to calculate how often the battery is at fault in complaints presented on this forum (in all the lists for the modern models) you would be amazed.

It is entirely likely that there was nothing at all wrong with the car apart from an undercharged battery.

 

+1.

 

Thanks for the feedback all

 

And the fact that the checks were made at approximately annual intervals reinforces that belief, IMO, though probably dealer or inspection rather than owner.

 

Dealer service depts still have no idea they are crushing their customers' car values by reporting nebulous, eyebrow raising comments that show up in carfax. Perhaps they should talk to their sales guys once in a blue moon?

Regardless, any unclear carfax comment or group of comments is going to reduce future buyer interest substantially. So IMO avoid the car even if its fine, unless you intend to keep it at all costs.