Has anyone else come across a face-lift XF where the leather on the dash has started to lift from around the instrument panel hump?

 

Yep, super common, even on the pre-facelift. I believe newer panels have staples around the edge to stop the leather lifting. Do a search, plenty of threads about it.

 

Is the leather "hide" or "bonded"?

 

common issue, the unfortunate part is that Jaguar wont accept responsibility, they will charge you a couple thousand $$ to replace the dash.

i believe its hide

 

The hide versions seem to be more susceptible to this problem. I just replaced mine with a bonded dashboard from a 2010 donor car. The manufacturing date stamp sticker was 2008 and it still looks like new. No stapling and no shrinking.

 

Not sure that's so true, my 2010's dash is not as bad as some I've seen but certainly not great with ripples around the instrument cluster and the center speaker, I can even see a gap where it's pulled from the edge of the windshield. I put it down to the fact my car spent the first years of it's life in the sun in TX.

 

Just wondering, is yours the hide or bonded leather?

 

As a 2010 XF Supercharged, his would be hide (real leather). Bond (plasticized leather) was only used on the bottom of the line model each year. And yes, real leather stretches and shrinks, bond does not to the same degree. Hide is smooth, bond has a pebble grain.

 

So, correct me if I'm wrong but if you spend many thousands of dollars more than what you would have for the base model, you get a product that is more susceptible to problems as a result of the natural material shrinking etc?
​​​​​​This is why I'm really happy with the dashboard that I found from such a bottom of the line car.

just a friendly bit of banter.

 

Yep. Kinda like the people that pay for really fancy wood decks on high end yachts as opposed to the guy with a 2 man Dolphin sailboat that is just all fiberglass.

Just because things cost a lot of money doesn't mean they last forever. You aren't always going to get durability when you pay for luxury. The texture low-end dashboard looks like crap compared to the smooth leather of the Premium edition, so I wouldn't do it any differently if I had to do it again.

 

i have to agree that the bonded leather texture doesn't look quite as good as the smooth hide version but that's only when the hide isn't shrinking, cracking or separating. this was a trade-off that I was prepared to make but many others may not have. I kept the hide dashboard so that if ever I sell the car, the next owner can choose for themselves.

At least the one that I have now shouldn't give as many problems in the future (Hopefully!!) and everything now matches perfectly. Having that bonded front section near the windscreen when the majority is hide was very irritating to me and I don't understand why it couldn't have all been the same. Did this change in the later models or does yours have the indecision dash?

 

Lotus, finally something we can agree on! The premium leather is so much better than the standard leather. It's what makes the car for me...and the HP