A few annoyances w. my new XF-S at the 2 month mark:

- rattle from the sunroof, can't block it out since the new design 'sunscreen' is totally sound-permeable unlike the previous model

- as mentioned in another thread, using the steering wheel radio station scroll button doesn't select the next preset station, just the next station on the band, which nobody wants

- bluetooth phone connection kicks out randomly

- can't seem to get the text reply or text auto-reply feature to work (can only read and listen to incoming texts)

- the positioning of the info screen reflects sunlight perfectly towards the driver if the sun is on the passenger side shining inwards, rendering the screen unreadable

- the hard plastic surrounding the HUD unit also reflects back into the driver's field of vision when driving on a sunny day

- the exhaust note is totally castrated; why can't they put a similar exhaust to the F-type S on our XFs?

Anybody with any fixes?
Anybody out there from JLR give a darn?

 

Have you followed the link in the first sticky on this forum, "smartphone connectivity"? For my iPhone, the linked page indicates that the car cannot reply to texts. It may be different for your phone, but I suspect that, unfortunately, your car is working as designed.

 

I can add a few good and bad things to this list after 2 months as well.


Clunk at the top of drivers side front or rear door when going over hard bumps in the road (pothole, manhole cover etc), not sure what or where it is and it's not loud enough to track down yet.


Dealer service - this sux bad, attitude is pretty bad, dealer is a fair way away and loaner program etc is not what I was expecting. Trying to get a imperfection on the door fixed (delivery issue) and a recal done. For comparison the mercedes dealer we have will drop off a loaner, pick up the car, drop it back etc.


Navigation/traffic - doesn't work, not clear if the Sirius satalite subscription is needed, trial subscription also doesn't work for some reason. Traffic should come with the nav system in a car like this not an extra, they include the apps and service for years so why not traffic?


Exhaust - I agree, it's not silent but doesn't have a lot of character, on the S model at least they could open it up a bit.


Speed limiter - not sure if I would like this or not but having it use the same value as the speed alert would be good vs a fixed speed. The speed alert can be set 20mph over the limit and it adapts as the limit changes but the limiter is fixed at single setting so it's of no real value.


Kickdown when in manual mode - when in sport + dynamic the car will hold the current gear at redline and not shift up which is good but it will kickdown in mid range if you get past a trigger point on the throttle, probably a safety feature but if I'm in manual I want full manual.


The radio preset/next button - yep I agree, it's stupid.


Switching modes to full sport takes too many steps - I miss the BMW M mode button which switches everything in a single push. In the Jag you need to move the dial to Sport, change to Dynamic setting, change the stability to track mode then ackowledge the AEB warning and the Trac warning before it all clears and you can see the gear etc. Having the warnings up isn't a big deal but it's annoying to have to use 5 actions to do what the BMW did in one.


On the plus side,
Gear ***** - Pretty good, not BMW or Porsche dual clutch good but still not bad for an auto.
Handling - The suspension is flat and works really well, the stock tires could use more grip as the suspension could take it. The torque vectoring you can feel but it seems ok, a little strange on turn in but after that you don't notice it much. Car seems to unsettle more than I expected if you go to gas hard mid corner, maybe the torque vectoring or something with the dynamic suspension as when the weight moves backward the car tries to tuck the nose in even on the same steering setting (no backend isn't sliding). More an issue on low/mid speed corners where your trying to get a hard exit out then high speed ones.
Power - enough for a big car designed to eat up the miles with 4 people on board.
Comfort - good.
AWD - great system, tackles the steep snow covered driveway well.

 

austaz, could you give me a hint or a pm about which dealer you use?

 

I have to say I have had virtually nothing to complain about with the exception of a failure to start last week, which appears to have sorted itself out.

I do have traffic, although not as good as the Garmin. One thing is rather unique, the nav screen showing traffic lights ahead as well as other road issues, construction, etc. Actual stand alone traffic information requires going several steps further and pressing the touch screen and getting information and then traffic. The U-Connect is a much more user friendly system, but this isn't a Dodge either. Al in all, a fairly nice system.

Power is more than adequate, although I do wish the exhaust was more authoritative. Shifting has been very good, getting used to the 8 speed from a 5 speed did take a bit of getting used to.

As far as Sport, traction control and Dynamics, it would have been great if it was a single touch system. But in their inimitable way, JLR makes you go through hoops to get what you want. Would have been nice to be able to set ALL and then have a single button on and off. But I do not consider that a problem, just the nature of the beast.

Dealer has been excellent in every way. Perhaps because we are repeat customers? They have always been top notch with the LR and are proving the same with the Jag. Unlike some dealers who want to blow you off after the sale, Hoehn JLR in Carlsbad has been a cut above.

The fit and finish has proven to be superb; I sealed the paint after it was at least 90 days past assembly, and it glows. Very pleased with the interior also.

In summary, a great car and nothing to complain about. Oh, maybe one minor thing...the folding mirrors, when manually folded, do not pop out at 15 MPH like other vehicles we have had. They do unfold when unlocking but I keep the car in a locked garage so if the mirrors are folded need to remember to pop them out. Just a JLR way of doing things I suppose.

 

The radio is just set up that way. I was getting all the "preset" stations until I realized they were all in a row...meaning I set the stations in line with their actual station frequencies so I thought it was doing presets but it does not. Owners manual seems to indicate the tuning is just that, tuning that brings you to the next station up or down.

Have not had an issue with the HUD as far as glare and it is sunny here almost all the time. The surround on mine is kind of textured, plus I wear polarized sunglasses so it has not been a problem.

Hope you get all sorted out.

 

I've had mine for 2000 miles or so now ...

1) Dealer experience -- the folks at the local dealer are nice enough but it's been a parade of errors, starting with delivering the car new (off their other lot) with 500 unexpected miles and a curbed rim which they replaced with one off another new car, then performing a recall on the trunk seal and handing it back with the seal installed completely crooked so the trunk would refuse to close, it took (seriously) three attempts to get that straightened out -- most comically when they took it back the second time and did not change anything because they said it was normal and not failing, and then it failed right in front of the service manager when they gave me the car back. That prompted them to actually replace it with another new one and put it in straight. They are good with Jag or LR loaners, however. And they gave me a zero deductible full coverage tire warranty at their cost with the car to make up for the delivery miles, which was good because I curbed the heck out of it (not used to such a big car). They gave me a loaner and the rim was repaired so I can't even tell. But, as the clowning continues, they overinflated that one tire by 10 pounds when they gave the car back to me.

2) The biggest disappointment to me with the car is the InTouch technology. Mine is a 2016 S, but the upgraded system was not available yet, so I have the standard InTouch. No traffic whatsoever, which is bad. Map screen looks like it is from 10 years ago so I just leave it in night mode. Trying to use the apps with my iPhone 6S has been mostly a fiasco ... plug the phone into the USB jack and the car takes over the phone completely. Try to use another app on the phone at the same time and it will drop the connection and want to "retry" connecting, which most of the time it can't. If you are trying to listen to music on the iPhone over the bluetooth connection, the music will "skip" forward a few microseconds periodically. The play lists and artists are invisible to the car over bluetooth. Use it connected to the USB jack and the iPhone will function reasonably well as an iPod with no skips. But try to use the car's music app and it will only "see" playlists or songs that have been played in the car previously through other means. The Stitcher app works well on the phone, but the InControl app for it is awful, you can only play back what's on the app's front page, not anything you've downloaded to the phone to listen to later and you can't search for other content. The "just drive" navigation is bare bones and hardly functions at all. Audio performance is just average -- to my musician's ears. I really thought this would be an upgrade over the MIM system in my former Audi and boy, was I mistaken. If I could, I would give the car back over this alone. As it is, I got an ugly magnetic mount for the iPhone and I stick it on the dash and use Waze to navigate and manually use Stitcher or the phone's Music app to listen. The text feature will show a text on the screen if you are not moving or read it to you but it was like voodoo to get it to start working which it eventually did on its own. The voice control system is terrible, it never understands anything. This is not what I expected in a $71,000 car.

3) The auto-start feature is annoying and non-defeatable. You have to hit the switch every time, which I typically remember to do when it shuts off and startles me.

4) I don't really see the point to the "S" function on the car, as you can manually shift in D and if you are using the "dynamic" mode I don't think there's any advantage to being in S ... but the manual is oblique about it so I'm not really sure.

5) The lane-keeping function is okay, I guess ... if it's set to vibrate you can feel it although it is not as attention-getting as the one in our BMW. If you set it to auto-correct it feels a bit dangerous, as if it could jerk the car back into the lane if you were trying to get around a sudden obstruction or debris in the road or a car drifting slightly or otherwise merging into your space, so I leave that off.

6) The car has good power, but the exhaust note is non-existent. That's a big disappointment, clearly since the other car has the same engine they should have been able to rectify that easily.

7) The S comes on the 20 inch rims and while they are good looking they are very sensitive to rough road surfaces, expansion joints, etc. The ride in my Ferrari on 20s is smoother for the most part. I have the pressures set to 35. It's not awful but it's not particularly luxurious in "normal" mode much less "dynamic" mode.

I'm no novice when it comes to high performance or luxury cars (Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Infiniti). Nor do I think my expectations are out of line at this price point.

There are some things I like about the car ... the looks, the overall feel. But I would have thought twice had I realized some of the above before I signed the deal. Other than that I am quite happy ... LOL

 

Excellent post. A great overall look at your thoughts and above all your disappointments.

People have posted there is no traffic on the navigation but there really is. It just takes several steps to get there which is a PITA if you are in any significant traffic. I agree they need pointers from, of all companies, FCA and the U-Connect 8.4 system.

All the "S" function does is change the shift points so the vehicle shifts more aggressively and remains in gear longer. Using the paddles overrides it anyway.

I have not had any issues with the InTouch system other than it is s l o w. I do not have an iPhone but rather an Android which works okay in all modes. I download a thousand songs or so on a flash USB and the display picks up all the info from the drive impeccably. However, response, as with the nav screen leaves something to be desired.

Fully agree on the exhaust. Will do aftermarket in the future.

Thanks again for your insightful post.

 

I admittedly have a lot of trepidation about moving to Jaguar and I'm hoping the upgraded ICTP that I've ordered will mitigate some of the traditional Jag tech issues. My car is still at least two months away and although I'd really hate to, I can walk away from the order. So I'm wondering - if you could do it all over again, would you have bought this car?

 

I've wondered about this as well. I thought that one of the user defined Dynamic settings was to set the gear shift points to "Normal" or "Dynamic". So if you set that setting to Dynamic, how does it differ from the "S" transmission mode?

 

If I could go back in time, I would choose something else. If the technology worked as advertised in the car, I might change my mind as I like everything else about the car, but it's too many annoyances and too much money to spend to be annoyed. I considered just taking the financial hit (and expected it to be considerable, too) and shopped the car against some comparably priced alternatives at several different dealers and was completely astonished at the depreciation on a perfect 2k mile loaded car, so in a sense I'm glad I leased it.

Regarding the traffic, the complaint is that the car does not show any live traffic updates on the map, as other cars are capable of. Sirius has nothing to do with that, apparently, as my trial was active.

One more quibble with the heads-up display ... the navigation arrows on there are nice to have but the car indicates when it is time to turn by slowly decreasing the fill from the bottom of the arrow up, if that makes sense. The amount of time that takes appears to be completely random depending on what road you are on ... it might be 1.5 miles or it might be 3/4 of a mile. Very difficult to judge how close you are to needing to make the turn as a result, you are constantly referring to the map to count intersections -- which is against the point of the HUD. It's one of those "Here? Turn here?" deals. Why they did not simply add a rolling countdown "1/4 mile, 500 yards, 250 yards, etc." to the display (as Audi did) is mystifying to me. Maybe they can do that in a software update. Maybe they can add traffic to the nav and make the car behave correctly with the apps in a software update. And maybe I will win the lottery, too.

I realize this is coming across as extremely negative, but I had no complaints with the Audi I had leased before this car, my wife's BMW 4 series convertible is great, I've always been happy with the Porsches I've owned. I went with the Jag as something different from the German cars I've owned for years, and it's *almost* a good thing. One of the most unfortunate things is the complete lack of posts on this version of the XF on all the forums I looked over before deciding to buy the car. When you are considering a particular BMW, Mercedes, etc., it's easy to find feedback from people who own the car but either Jaguar does not generally attract the kind of drivers who love to post about their cars online or they just have not sold very many of the cars for people to comment on. Will be interesting to see how they fare with the new XE and the SUV, because I'm sure the systems are the same on those cars.

 

Thanks for all of your posts and your assistance. I think that we're similar drivers and in similar situations. I've tried to read all the negative comments about the XF very carefully so that I can understand what will bother me. I know what it's like to get turned off by a car early on. It's a bad situation if you start by not loving your car immediately.

I've already determined from test drives that the HUD nav display is totally worthless. But I can live with that as long as the arrows in the center display are adequate.

I am concerned about the lack of traffic display on the map. I don't know whether its different in the ICTP. It's something I have to look into as that will be very annoying to me.

I don't like that you can't disable start/stop permanently as I could on my BMWs and Porsches. But I know I'll be driving in Dynamic mode 100% of the time. I'm accustomed to hitting the Sport button on my Porsche as soon as I drive off, and I think there's an easy "two finger" move to switch Dynamic on and start/stop off as I drive away, so I'm hoping I can live with that.

I don't stream music and I won't physically connect my phone to the car. I'll use a USB stick, and from what I'm reading, that works well. So fingers crossed on that issue.

But still, I have that nagging feeling. How many work arounds are too many?

 

Exactly ... it is making me a little crazy to see my iPhone perched on the dashboard next to that big display every day just so I can have more useful navigation and listen to music or podcasts without the interface aggravation. I have a friend with a 13-year-old BMW 540i who does the same thing -- and his car is worth about $8k.

I don't think the lack of traffic in the navigation would be as annoying to me if I lived elsewhere, but as you know, traffic around Boston is always a headache and you definitely want to be able to see what you're heading for. It becomes a habit to just zoom out on the navigation to see what the roads ahead look like and decide which route to take.

One of my first experiences with the car was sitting at a dead standstill a few hundred yards past an offramp due to a bad accident up ahead. There were other routes I could have taken had the navigation given me warning about that, or I could have at least taken that exit and backtracked. They closed the highway right behind me. Finally, everyone behind me had the nerve to back up and I got out of there.

 

Looking back, yes I would do it again.


The nav traffic is a big pain, but it's something they can fix with a software update if they wanted to so maybe we will get lucky.


Having something other than an E Class, A6 or 5 series is a good point for me. Then the handling, power, awd etc are all good points.


The rest of the negative points for me are comparing the car to a M3 which isn't really apples to apples.


One other issue I found was the seats, on the S at least the indent for your back ends 3/4 of the way up the seat which seems ok for shorter people but for me it ends up pushing me forward under the shoulder blades so I have to have a lot of recline on the seat, feels like I'm driving a civic with neon lights under it ...

 

If you have the 14 way power seats the you should have two adjustments for the lumbar support. Can you raise or lower it enough for comfort? I took about two days of messing with it to get it right.

 

Just hit 2 month mark yesterday.

Minuses: Random Bluetooth connectivity drops - this is probably what pisses me off the most. Have to stop car and open/shut the door to reset - WTF! There is a supposed SW update but I'm still waiting for it.

Navigation. Every once in awhile I will notice a slight red colored line which I assume is traffic but, it's not as noticeable as Audi MMI. I actually prefer to use Waze as I like the traffic re-routes and other notifications - really, I only care about the police! But, I like having the big center map view available in the car. However, one of the most frustrating things is that I can't set a default zoom. It changes back to super close up. It's useless to me in that view so I notice while it's a feature I HAD to have, I rarely use it.

Could Be Better:
I also found the InControl apps to be more frustrating than useful. Most of the time it's because it doesn't recognize my phone and I have to disconnect and reconnect the cable before it does. So, I rarely use it - USB, satellite, and BT streaming for me.

Lighting. The interior lights are too bright at night. I like to have darkness in the cabin when driving highway at night but the dimmest setting is too bright to me. In the old old old Saabs (20 yrs ago) I could turn ALL the lights off. I haven't found this feature in other cars but it's one I wish they all had. I also don't like that turning off the center screen only replaces it with a bright white logo. In my last car, I could turn the lights waay down and turning off the center screen actually turned it off.

I like the remote start app but wish I had a key fob option as well. Most of the time, I get to my car before it actually connects and starts. I have to plan to use it. To give credit, it might be my network or wifi connection but the app does seem a little slow.

I've also noticed that it feels a little loose on slow corners with a push of power on exit. I've never broken loose though and attributed this to missing the Audi Quattro as I do not have AWD (I bought off the lot in FLA- not a standard down here).

Take it or leave it:
The auto stop-start. My daily commute is all surface roads w some long lights. So, I don't mind the feature AND it's silly, but I like the little shake/rumble the car gives on re-start; it reminds me of the big block engines and days at the drag strip when I was young. I'm probably the only one who thinks that. My hubby (NOT a car guy) has noted it's rougher on restart than other brands. And one friend asked why my car kept shaking. So, if I have passengers, I turn it off. I think it should automatically disengage in dynamic + S, and feel like it should be a menu option as well.

Love:
The way this car drives. I drove everything comparable and nothing else come close. Would I make the same decision again? Yes, most likely. I still smile every time I get in to drive and I love the driving experience. But, would I recommend? Not sure. Probably only if the driving experience mattered as much to them as it does me. If they just wanted a nice sedan, most likely not.

Love that it's not the same-old, same-old. I've never been cookie cutter and I think the Jag brand represents the alternative.

 

In general, a real drivers car.

 

Well I found one solution to the lighting during evening driving. In the options menu, I turned off the screensaver. It now turns the entire center panel black when I turn it off, rather than put a huge white logo up. MUCH better!

(And yes, I always drive in dynamic, so red lights are the standard for me). I've tried to look up stealth mode in the manual (online version) but it just seems to loop me back to the same area without any specifics. From what I found, it looks like it will automatically lower the interior lights to lowest setting but, that's what I run them at anyways but, that might be helpful to someone else.
http://www.ownerinfo.jaguar.com/docu.../proc/G1802142

 

I also find the info screen very bright but I leave it on the navigation map set to night mode which is mostly black anyway.

Still makes me slightly nuts to have had to mount my iPhone next to that big screen to control everything else, but ...