I was in stop and go traffic and the gauge stayed dead center, even though I knew in 98 degree weather the engine temp was higher as the engine was a little sluggish. Why the F$ck does jag not build a temp gauge that is accurate, both my XK and XK8 were the same way. I want to know what the engine is doing so I do not push it to hard. I am always afraid I am going to have a coolant loss and I will not know till is to late, had it happen in my XK, luckily I was pulling into to my home when it happended.

 

I always thought the needle was just painted on in that position.
The only one that moves is the gas gauge!!
And of course the two big ones.

 

The water temperature is irrelevant. The only thing that is interesting is the oil temperature. Modern cars don't overheat, the water gauge is pointless.
This has nothing to do with Jaguar itself, in all other modern water-cooled cars it usually gets stuck in the middle.

I´ve got a Triumph Spitfire, there it is interesting in the city.

 

I had read - either on here, or the UK forum - that Jaguar supposedly set it like this due to complaints from some owners of other Jags in the past about the needle moving around. Heaven help us if that is the real reason.

Accurate water temp, oil temp and oil pressure gauges would all be lovely things to have but Jaguar, in ther infinite wisdom, saw fit to exclude those things for whatever reason. The lack of an oil pressure sensor still absolutely baffles me (no pun intended)

 

This is very common with most manufacturers. They program it to have a buffer so it is not moving around as many owners mistakenly believe changing gauges are problematic. So most program it to not be linear and have a buffer around the normal operating temperature so it won't move unless it really gets outside the normal envelope. Cars with a 190 thermostat can cycle 180-220F and the needle won't move. Unfortunately the vast majority of drivers prefer this.

The best setup I had was in my BMW E93 where the gauge showed Oil Temp instead of Water Temp (as it should) and was minimally buffered.

 

As Thunder Dump correctly states, this is common practice among vehicle manufacturers today, not just Jaguar (people always seem in a rush to blame Jaguar for what are most often industry-wide practices). This has nothing to do with economic measures. As long as the computers see no temperature increase beyond the expected (taking into account ambient temperatures, elevation, incline and many more factors), the gauge needle will always stay pegged in the “normal” sector once proper operating temperature has been reached. And yes, this is to prevent unnecessary anxiety on the part of the driver…the unfortunate corollary of this is that when an over-heating situation occurs, it is a sudden and alarming situation.

I completely agree that it would be better to have a gauge that told the true story.

 

If we could leave an OBD scanner plugged in without causing parasitic drain, we could read the actual temperature that is monitored by the ECU while we drive.

 

I would have liked to see Jaguar have some additional gauges for things like oil pressure, oil temp and amps available as part of the display options in the dash. They could be electronic readouts like LCD gauges that had an analog appearance. They would look great in between the speedometer and tach.

I agree that most modern cars have the water temp gauges calibrated to come up to normal range and then stay there. I haven't owned a car in more than 40 years that I have even seen the gauge indicate it was running hotter than the normal range. My Nissan 370Z however did have an oil temperature gauge. And those cars were known for running hot and would go into "limp mode" when the oil temp exceeded a certain temperature. Many owners added expensive oil coolers and later models had one from the factory. I used to keep a close eye on it when driving the car in a spirited manner and several times I got very close to that limp mode temperature so I backed off until the needle returned to the safe range.