Hey guys,

Im 19 years old looking to buy a 2004 Jaguar X Type 3.0 sport. It has 94,483 miles on it. All new brakes and pads this July. New tires in February. Rear lower control arms and intake manifold gaskets new this year. Only one key and FOB not working. Looking to convince my old man to let me buy it. Cost of annual repairs?? thoughts?

Any feed back would be great! thanks for your help!

 

Also the guy is asking $5700. And will it be good in snow i live in wisconsin!

 

KP, honestly, $5700 for that car is kinda high. The X-Types are not holding their value all that well. So, you should have lots of room to talk with them.

As for cost of parts, I would say that this car is not any worse than any other vehicle that you may buy. The trick will be that you won't always be able to go to the local auto parts store to get what you want. So, it will take a little more work to get what you need. If the local store can get it, you will have to wait a day to get it shipped in. As for repairing the vehicle, if you can work on other vehicles, this one is no different. Very straight forward and most people here have found that it is probably one of the easier vehicles to work on other than maybe gas tank work or having to deal with the transfer case.

Now, for what I will caution you on. If you are thinking about driving the car sporty, this is going to be a very expensive vehicle for you. While the transfer case can last the life of the car, it doesn't like being hit hard right off the line (ie, racing away from a stop light). The X-Type is more of a cruiser. It loves getting up to 75 mph, setting the cruise and ticking off the miles.

Another thing that I will let you in on and this may steer you away from this actual vehicle and over to another X-Type. Look in the door jam and see what month it was made (it is posted there). If it was made on/before March 2004, then you are good. If it was made after March 2004, is there a switch on the center console labeled "DSC" (will have an image of a car sliding back and forth). If you have the later car with no DSC button, then you are no better off than having a FWD or RWD vehicle. Why do I say that as the car is "AWD"? Very simple. In April 2004, Jaguar went to a new style transfer case that is an "open" design (vice having a viscous coupling like the earlier cars had which was seen as the case for why there was a rash of transfer cases breaking due to hard use). What this means to you is while all 4 wheels are getting power under normal use, when one wheel looses traction, all the power is going to go to that one wheel and it is going to spin crazy. Having the DSC system, the car is going to sense this wheel slipping and will actually apply the brake to the wheel (no driver input required) and cause it to slow down and restore power to the other wheels, keeping all 4 wheels pulling. Being up where you are, this is going to be very key. So, you can see why I say that this specific car may not be the best one to get. There are tons of X-TYpes out there and I just sold mine with 180K+ miles on it. So, you treat it right and it will treat you right.

If you have more questions, let me know. As you can see, I will tell you how it is.

 

KP. I had an X-Type for almost 7 years and it was a 2005, so it had the newer style transfer case and it had DSC. As long as you have at least a decent set of all season tires I thought it did well in the snow. Maybe not as good as some other AWD cars, but I never was worried I was going to get stuck.

It was one of the most reliable cars I ever owned. You just need to keep up with the maintenance. You have come to the right place as this is probably the most helpful and knowledgeable forum you will ever find. A lot of friendly people willing to help.

Do you have a link to the particular car you are looking at?

 

KP being a Northerner like you and having spent twice your age under cars...get a car from down south. I just got my 2003 from Vegas a month ago. I put it up on the rack a pressured washed the under side of the car. It shined like a new car. NO RUST ON ANYTHING!! I will still be driving this car in 10 years because i painted and rust proffer everything. A northern car will be rusting bad after a year.

I paid $700 to have it shipped to Cleveland. That is what you need to do!!