Hey buddy, if u want to drive ur luxury vehicle in the winter go right ahead, it's not mines so I can give a rats ***. for me, I'm trying to preserve as much value as i can in The car, if I keep it or trade it in, I want to keep it in mint condition. I store It in the winter because I don't want salt getting on my car plus the chance of accident is high, winter mode/tires doesn't matter because anyone can slid into you. I like my miles low as well. I keep my car cleaned and buffed, ppl swear its brand new. It's an 09' sc with 31k miles on it and I just believe in protecting something u pay for.

I keep my car buffed so much that even when it rains the water just slides off and u can still see the shine even when raining. People don't understand how good your car will look if u just take care of the paint. I get my car buffed once a month along with regular washes. No way in hell she see's even a snow flurry. U may be from Canada but where I'm from this is how we do this.

 

To maximize the retained value you should not drive your Jaguar ever. Are you crazy?

Every time you buff that paint you are removing some of the paint. That's how buffing works, you grind off the paint to below the bottom of every scratch. This is assuming you don't wax the scratches. Every time you buff your paint you put more tiny scratches in it. This is why I never wash my car in winter, the dirt layer protects the paint from scratches and stone chipping. That's the way we do it way up here in the Arctic. It doesn't rain here from October to April.

Have you thought how much depreciation your Jaguar suffers each winter you refuse to drive it? After three winters that costs more than a complete repaint!

 

I have a set of brand new,mounted Blizzaks with tpms on Jaguar factory rims for sale. They are 19s and staggered. PM if interested in pictures and pricing.

 

Disagree. A dealer is going to give you almost an identical amount for a car that is 8/10 versus a car that is 10/10. I have a 14 year old A4 that I daily drove in upstate New York for 4 years and took on many a snowy ski trip and it still looks immaculate. Two washes (and promptly washing off salt) and waxes a year and a clay bar is all it took. I would rather enjoy the car than park it in the winter. At the end of the day, you will get marginally, if anything, more for not doing so.

 

Staying with the topic as opposed to the undertone …

I got my Base XF (as in 18inch wheels) a year ago. I drove it as a fair weather car for the first six months. Then I decided I would rather use it as a daily driver. Once I started driving it in the rain, I quickly realized I had no confidence in the Continental ContiProContact all season tires that were on it from the factory. I had plenty if instances of “slippage” at times when I didn’t feel I was driving aggressively at all. Additionally, I attempted to leverage “winter mode” in the rain. But in my opinion, it had no impact on my confidence.

So with winter coming, I decided I would change the tires to see if it had any impact. I went with Bridgestone Potenza RE970AS as it was the top rated all season rubber (at the time, now it’s Continental ExtremeContact DWS which I’ve had on another vehicle and I find a little rough ridding) on tirerack. So far, I’ve been getting around just fine with these. But overall my confidence with rear wheel drive and snow is just low and I’ve only had them on a little more than a month (and snow has been minimal in Indy since I put them on) So I’m trying to give it a fair chance before I just go out and replace the XF with something that has AWD (like 13 XF ☺ ). Overall I’m just pretty convinced that the original Continentals just weren’t a good all season perhaps focusing too much on their dry traction. The jury is still out on the new rubber.

 

Common illusion that awd gives you better grip in the slippery stuff. You still only steer with two wheels and all cars brake with four wheels.

The "slippy" feeling you get is 310 lb ft of torque through an excellent automatic. More like 350 lb ft or so if you have the 5.0.

Winter mode doesn't reduce the engine torque, it starts the car always in second gear, even if you floor it, and it smooths the shifting, holding gears more readily if the dsc senses loss of traction and I believe it reduces throttle sensitivity but I don't know that.

The Continentals are pretty good for an all season. I've not experienced any wet weather issues. No all season works properly in the snow.

The all season tires you moved up to will give much better summer performance but less traction on snow or ice. The harder ride is the price you pay for more grip. There's no free lunch for tire designers.

I am curious which rwd car you are comparing your slippy Jaguar to. Mercedes and BMW are both much twitchier. Audi just plows off the road with terminal understeer which is absolutely incurable. That's a problem with awd. Jaguar's awd system is a rwd system which engages the front wheels only when needed. Fom your description of your experience I predict you will love it. It will be much superior to Audi or any other system short of a Subaru actually.

 

AWD does give better overall grip than 2WD when accellerating or driving at steady speed. Four patches of rubber are pulling instead of two pulling and two being dragged along.
AWD is better in bends too because applied torque is split between four wheels and so the tendency to lose grip is postponed to a higher speed or tighter corner.
AWD is better in braking because the tendency for a wheel to lock up is postponed by being kept in synch with the other three. Try two otherwise identical cars incl tyres, one AWD and one 2WD without electronics e.g. DCS.
Finally the front vs rear bias of AWD. Most people feel safer with a slight rear bias and indeed they are less likely to get into serious trouble. The granddaddy of modern AWD performance cars, the Jensen FF will go into a four wheel drift if you go too fast into a corner on steady throttle. Using throttle and steering you can change that a little bit of rear drive bias if you want to. Torque split is 37% front and 63% rear.

 

To WHealy,

I have an XF SC with 20 inch staggered wheels. I purchased one of the better snow tires on the market, Nokian Hakka (abbreviated name) R's. I could not imagine driving the car with all seasons. When the snow is wet, slushing or combined with ice, my car does squirm quite a bit on the road. The worst conditions are coming to my house as I live on a hill, and it is definitely not the same as former BMW X5 with all seasons. I expect that 18's with winter rubber would be an significant improvement over all seasons, based on my experience with tires this season (my first with the car). The car performs best on hardpack snow.

To Jagular,

I notice you cannot have the car in "snow mode" and "dynamic mode". I wouldn't think dynamic should affect snow mode, but I suspect Jaguar doesn't think you need dynamic mode in snow conditions?

 

Per and I agree to disagree on the desirability of awd, but it is mainly semantics. I agree awd gives superior traction for acceleration. I disagree about the effect on cornering as awd gives terminal understeer on all cars currently so equipped except the Porsche Carrera 4 ( which is superior to the standard rwd 911 for other reasons), the Lamborghini/Audi Gallardo/R8 and it's companion Murcielago. Of these, only the Porsche is suitable for winter use! The current XF is also likely to be superior awd in winter due to its part time design. The Haldex based awd conversion of fwd models is also a part time design and comparable to fwd in most winter driving situations as it is a fwd design with torque transfer to the rear whels only when traction is lost at the front. The Jaguar design cleverly exploits this but in a rwd design.

My beef with awd is it only works well in the hands of an expert driver. The driver already in trouble on bad roads is going to get deeper into trouble with awd than he will with the safest drive setup: fwd.

As for Dynamic mode helping in winter, I'd say not. For winter one needs very smooth transitions of torque application to the road surface. Mind you, that's what racing drivers routinely do on warm dry roads at the limit. This is why Canada, Finland(Scandinavia actually) and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have produced some very fast racing drivers: lots of experience driving very fast on low grip surfaces.

Anyway, for safe winter driving, braking and steering control are everything. Acceleration is irrelevant. Dynamic mode is mainly aimed at acceleration, especially out of corners. The transient roll stiffness will be firmer which is the opposite of what you need in low grip situations. This is why "wet" suspension setup on a F1 car (or any car) requires that the roll bars be set to softer, the weight transfer bias set more equal and the tire pressures set towards the softer end of the suitable range ( though the cold pressure will be higher because the tires will run cooler).

Btw, in my experience the Hakka R is a superb snow tire. I have long experience with Nokian tires with my first set of unbelievable Hakkas in the mid 80's.

 

As far as awd goes it has it's advantages in many winter situations. Today, I backed my XF into my snow covered driveway. The transition from the street is up a slope. I also backed up a VW Tiguan. The road is clear so front wheels on slightly wet but clean pavement. Jag slips backing in if I back in too slow, wheel spin results. VW no spin, no slip, as front wheels drive the car if rear is on slippering surface. A few weeks back when the hill in front of my drive was snow with slick icing surface underneath, both cars were sliding around pretty good, even the Suburban, until I kicked in low 4 wheel drive.


In the end, I am driving my Jag in winter because I enjoy the car and prefer it over an SUV or winter rat at this point. If conditions get real ugly, I can drive one of the other cars but don't prefer it. I still don't think I would get the XF AWD 6 cylinder if I had the choice. If Jag made the V8 in AWD I would consider but only after test driving. I would not have thought this before getting a RWD car with high horsepower.

 

The Tiguan uses the Haldex system so is fwd until the front wheels lose traction. There's no way you can really be sure how much drive torque is going to the rear wheels.

The new supercharged V6 is actually the V8 with two cylinders not finished or filled with pistons, looks odd. The power and torque are much superior to the 4.2 V8 and comparable to the 5.0 V8. The supercharged V6 is as real world quick as the V8 even with the added weight of the awd. The awd is part time just like your Tiguan, only rwd instead. Driver is only sent to the front wheels if the rear wheels begin to slip. Jaguar claims it anticipates slippage but hardly, it's just very finely tuned to the wheel speed sensors. The Haldex type clutch pack is electronically modulated and begins locking up as soon as a rear wheel begins to overspeed even momentarily.


The front drive portion of the awd passes through the engine sump and for reasons not clear it wont fit in the V8 despite the block being exactly the same length. Jaguar also claims their awd won't fit th rhd cars so not available in the UK, but that seems odd to me also.

 

I never said to never drive the car. Learn how to read.

 

Oh we read just fine thanks. In fact, we also understand what we read. Try it sometime. Really useful.

May I suggest you concentrate on sharing useful or interesting information and then leaving it at that.

You choose to garage your Jaguar for the winter. Fine. Your choice. However, many of us buy our Jaguars as daily drivers. For us, Jaguar extensively tests and engineers the XF so we can drive in all weathers, on all roads and at all times of the year anywhere in the World. Jaguar intends that its customers drive their Jaguars every day, regardless of the weather. In fact, demand for an all weather Jaguar in North America lead Jaguar to engineer, test and build a superb awd version of the XF and the XJ just for extreme winter conditions. This model will not be sold in Jaguar's home market because it isn't needed.

So, by all means miss all the fun and thrill of driving your Jaguar in winter but don't expect many people to agree with you. They aren't Ferraris you know. (Even Ferrari makes a winter car mainly for North America, the awd FF).

And you are wasting your money storing an ordinary car like an XF all winter long. It's a Jaguar and the depreciation is fierce until the car is at least 6 years old. That's not rational but that's what the market thinks of the Jaguar name.

 

The only problem is that it all comes at a weight penalty, which doesn't help at all.

 

The Jag is a thing of beauty...but is useless if not driven. It isn't the 1960's anymore, paint technology has come a long way and a winter driven car isn't an automatic rust bucket. It's no different in snowy climates than anywhere else, you need to take care of your car.

If I look at the last time I was in Phoenix for example, the number of cars with sun damaged paint was ridiculous...hmm, I guess people in Phoenix should drive their cars in the sun.

Anyway, my philosophy is use and enjoy the car, maintain it well and that will deliver what I paid the money for. If you want a garage sculpture, that's great too, just not my cup of tea.

And...if you're not comfortable handling a car in the winter, adjust accordingly. However, that doesn't mean it's crazy or irresponsible to drive a RWD in the winter - what the hell was going on for the first 80 years of driving?

 

I'm sorry, but you are one of those individuals that just don't know any better. I have the supercharged XF with the low profile summer Pirelli tires that came stock with the car. The service department manager told me that this isn't a winter car, regardless of the winter mode. Now maybe its different for other XF's, but anyone with the XFR or supercharged knows the rear simply has to much torque and power. You have to be stupid to think a RWD of this kind of power is a winter car. IT IS NOT!!! Its in the same category as a Mustang Cobra or Corvette, its not good in the winter. Furthermore, Low profile tires are never good in these conditions. Instead of flipping the tires off and on, why not just invest that money towards a beater to drive in the winter? Even if you get the winter tires, why take the chance of accident in such bad road conditions? You can have the best winter tires on the marker and someone can slide into you in 2 seconds. If the roads are slick enough, any vehicle can lose traction. If you were half-way intelligent you would know that.

It's almost common sense where I live that when you have a luxury vehicle, you always keep a second vehicle because you don't want to drive your nice car around all the time for numerous reasons. I hate to see someone with a 65k vehicle and that's the only car they have.

Having a 2nd vehicle Is just a good practice that most people do when they are smart and have the funds to do so.. If I go play ball with the fellas, and I know I'm getting sweaty, I have a vehicle to drive for that. I wouldn't want me and my sweaty friends in my Jag. If you are struggling to understand those concepts then obviously you're not use to having a luxury vehicle.

 

I can understand everyone's point of view being that the OP was talking about tires. Me personally, I don't even drive mine in the rain. (although I did get caught once on my way to get the car serviced.) It has nothing to do with handling, or tires, or how much the car is worth. I just can't stand driving a dirty car. Yes my daily driver gets caught in the rain, but the moment the rain is done and the roads are clear, I'm cleaning my daily driver. It's just how I am. Now Maryland winters aren't as bad as Canada, upstate New York, Illinois and other places so it's easier to maintain. We get occasional snow, but it's never too much and it's gone pretty quickly. I will drive my car in winter, but it has to be a clear, sunny, salt free road kind of day. So it comes down to peoples personal preference. I just hate a dirty car.

 

The XFR and supercharge tires are just to wide. So even with winter tires on those models, it still isn't sufficient. My neighbor has a supercharged xf as well and he bought a beater after the dealer told him he would not only need new winter tires, but rims as well!!!

You can call a jaguar dealer, ask to speak to someone in SERVICE and see what they say about driving a SC in the winter. You will find out that the answer would be if u got a 2nd car to drive that in the winter.

 

Car preservation debate is still going on i see.

You paid all the money and you really think you enjoy your car sitting in a garage?

Just because the service guy told you it's not a winter car, doesn't mean that's a fact. Who gives a sh#t what the service guy has to say. He isn't God.

Did it occur to you maybe that his driving skills suck, that's why he told you that?

Lets get Mike Cross in a XFR that handles so terribly and your dealer guy in a awd Audi. Then, we will see how bad a XFR is.

 

Well this guys car is ruined...I would give him $10 for that thing now...piece of junk. I bet if he garage stored it it might be worth $11 but nobody would probably know so they would all be the same just based on KM's and cosmetics.

Nice 20" SC wheel's he has on there too...those things stink...look at how slowly he is taking those turns...pff that RWD SC car is terrible...

I can't believe when he shovels the car off that it doesn't just peel the paint right off with it. Must be camera magic. They can do amazing things with CGI now it appears, this video being living proof.

Probably have a tow rope hooked up the whole time and that's how it's moving...yea thats it.

Sound about right Legend?