Drive and the whole left hand side of the shifter is supposed to be like that. it's clutchless manual overdrive. It shouldnt easily shift out of park or reverse tho.

 

+1 everything he said is right on the dot! It should shift back into park with ease as well!

 

Just to elaborate, this should be in your owners manual.
2nd gear is 1st and 2nd gear.
3rd is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear.
4th is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
5th is 1-5.
And drive is 1st thru 6th.
All the manual overdrive does is stops it from shifting up when you select one of the lower gears, so you can drive high rpm when you need it. It will automatically downshift for you tho, so you can have it in 5th driving at 5 miles per hour, but the car will actually be in 1st gear.

 

My shifter is very deliberate when going into all gears. No soft feel.

 

Well my guess would just be that cuz ur car is a beast, with 400 horsepower, everything it does is deliberate.
Are cars are just 6 cylinders, not very strong, so when we shift it's less noticable. That's jsut a guess tho...but in my dad's xk8 it shifts deliberatly too, in my car it's very smooth

 

Are we talking about the shift lever movement? That's what I thought this post was about and " that's what I'm talking about Willis"
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I just bought an S-type (gently used) and noticed that the shifter doesn't stay locked in place. For example, it can be bumped from Dto the 5th gear position without much force. Isis supposed to be that way or do I need to make atrip to the Jaguar dealer?

 

Yea I knew that's what you were talking about Arnold.
On the xk8 it's not like your smootly lowering it when you shift gears, it's like you have to jam it.