A couple months ago I started looking for an X351. I have been driving my beautiful XK8 the last 7 years and have it pretty much restored to being twice the car it was when I got it, along the way enjoying both the driving experience and the DIY efforts. Before that I had an X350 that I really enjoyed. I needed to get something again that had real back seats. Our grandkids are getting older and the XK8 is just not going to meet our needs.

When I started my search I was looking at 2017 models, but really did not like a few things about them. Mostly it was the supercharged only options and the auto-start feature. I found a couple I liked but would rather have one that is 5.0 NA since I want to DIY most repairs and am familiar with the 4.2 NA engine. I studied a lot in this forum. So I know the pros/cons of the models over the years.

I kept looking until I found this one. Its a 2011 XJL 5.0L NA with only 14K miles on it.

The car was a trade-in at the Jaguar/Aston/McLaren dealer in West Palm Beach. Was kept at a "winter house" in south Florida and driven when residents were in town. Even though the car had little use, it was regularly maintained with all the 15/30/60K mile services performed at the appropriate time intervals as if it was driven 15K a year. So all fluids, filters, wiper blades, etc. were changed at appropriate times. Its even had new P-Zero tires put on it in the last month.

The colors are Stratus Grey / London Tan. Interior looks nearly new as would be expected with so few miles on it. Exterior looks like it was never driven on the highway much. Paint is in excellent condition. Car was always garaged and it shows.

Here are some pics I got from the dealer. Lots more in this album.












This car even comes with its own matching booster seats.
Never seen anything like these. Anybody know if they are a Jaguar accessory?



I like everything about this car except the color choice for the headliner and pillars. But I can correct that easy enough.

I maintained a thread in the XK8 forum that covers all my DIY efforts on that car. Will probably do the same here for this car.

BTW - the XK8 is now for sale. We don't have space to keep it. PM me if you are interested.

 

Nice find! Congratulations. I leased a 2016 XJL and liked the car so much I bought it at lease end. Enjoy!

 

Nice find!!! Hope the XK8 finds a new owner as dedicated as you were

 

Great find and great car! Last year I found a 2011 XJL Super Sport for sale at the Jaguar dealer in Ocala, I considered trading in my daily driver for it but it was gone before I could get there. I'll be following your updates on this one too.

 

Looks like you found a good example. I've never seen those booster seats before, and they're not listed in the 2011 sales brochure.
I wonder where the PO registered the car? It's a shame you're going to have two or four holes in your bumper from an unneeded license tag holder.
You have no doubt seen several posts here relating to issues on this model, particularly the early ones. Ignore Jaguar's engine oil change interval, and do it every 5k.
I too didn't want the start/stop, the 8-speed or the V6, and ended up with a SWB 2012 Portfolio from a private owner in upstate NY. Earlier, I had an awful experience at an independent dealer near MIA. Ended up purchasing another one-way ticket home, as the car was, ahem, not exactly as advertised Made for a very long day! (but I did have an outstanding lunch at a Cubanos cantina across the street).
I hope you get many good years of enjoyment from your new(ish) ride.

 

Nice looking XJ.

 

Glad you got it!
Car does have a strange colored headliner? Three tone interior. I would have thought Jaguar would have installed a black headliner. I have the two tone London Tan/Charcoal interior and it has a black headliner.
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congrats dude! shes beautiful

 

where can I buy a booster! I need it.

 

Thanks to all for the warm welcome to this group.

My wife and I went to get the car last Friday. It was about 200 miles away. The drive back was both uneventful and enjoyable. This car drives perfect. And it is totally quiet. I can't detect a rattle, rumble, squeak or anything so I am very pleased about that. One worry I had was the roof noises I had read about.

This car was always serviced at the same dealer so I got the entire service history. For a car with under 15K miles it has already had:

• 9 Oil changes
• 3 Air filter replacements
• 3 Brake Fluid flushes
• 2 Fuel Injection cleanings
• 1 Throttle Body service
• 6 Wheel Alignments
• TSB Roof fixes - totally quiet yay!
• Front door speaker replaced
• Sticky buttons replaced
• Front sway bar bushings and links replaced
• Rear toe links replaced
• Pollen filter replaced
• Wiper blades replaced
• Headliner replaced
• Tires replaced Feb 2021
• plus a few other TSB items for software flashes

All of the above was in addition to the 15/30/45/60K mile services the dealer performed under covered maintenance.

The previous owner even kept the original window sticker so I got that too.

Overall I am happy with the purchase. Its a great car now. Will be awesome in a few weeks after I make some improvements.

Already found a replacement touch screen from a 2012 for under $100 so will do that soon.

Also will deal with the bluish shifter bezel since I hate that a lot. Think I will wrap in woodgrain to match doors. All my Jags so far have had wood around the shifter and I kind of miss that in this car. I wrapped the overhead console in my XK8 and that turned out fantastic so I am confident this will turn out nice too.

Later will refurb the brake calipers and rotors. Fronts are a bit rough looking.

Eventually will do trans pan filter fluid.
Eventually will do water pump and pipes (did my 4.2 so no big deal here).
Eventually will do tensioners (never been that deep into engine but I know somebody who has done several 4.0 tensioner jobs so hoping for some guidance someday).


To answer some comments/questions..

• Yeah I was bummed about the front plate holes too. My X350 had same issue. I already ordered matching paint so I can cap those holes and make them disappear such that they don't look any worse than the parking sensors.
• I don't get the weird color combo of the light headliner either. But I have looked at several hundred of these cars lately and a lot of them have same odd interior. I had thought I would just swap it all over to the dark version but found out the dealer just had the headliner redone before putting it up for sale. And after thinking about it the light color won't hold the Florida sun/heat as much as the dark would. But I can't stand the pillars being that light color where I have to see them all the time. So I decided to just swap out the pillars for now and keep the headliner and all its trimmings in the light color above. At least this way I won't have to look at it on the pillars and hate how it breaks up the lines of the interior. Already found a full set of pillars in dark suede from a 2016 with 17K miles for about $350 and should arrive Friday.
• I looked closer at the booster seats and they look custom made. Not sure who made them. No markings that matter on them. I do remember that Recarro did custom car seats so maybe try that if you want matching ones similar to these.

I have bought my last 3 Jaguars remotely. I spend a lot of time looking and am sort of superstitious about it in that I need to get a vibe that its the right one to buy. This one hit that vibe. While I was looking I remember lamenting about how ugly the grandkids booster seats would look in the car. Then wow this car had them - go figure that. Even the previous owner was named David same as me (his still paired phone was named David's Phone).

Thanks again to all. The next several years are going to be fun.

 

I had a very similar experience from a now defunct dealership near MIA (Alpine), who sold me a 2011 XJ in Jan 2016 with a broken water pump off the lot, among some other smaller things. I was planning on driving it from Florida to NYC and made it to Hilton Head before she finally died.

Guys at Hilton Head Jaguar sorted me out though.


Be very careful and know what you're getting into when approaching a headliner job. It requires the removal of the front windshield to get in and out correctly, and is a bitch to do. The side pillars aren't too terrible, but just watch the clips and pins.

As for the faded shifter plate, it requires some work but isn't bad to get out at all. Would love to see it wrapped in a wood vinyl!

 

So we have put about 2K miles on the XJL since we got it about 2 months ago. It now has about 16K miles on it total. Taken several long weekend trips in it and it runs and drives as I expected - great!

Before this purchase, the last time I had driven one of these was many years ago when Jaguar had that travelling road show. I got to drive one around a makeshift road course complete with dirt road and slippery slopes. Was a blast.

I have found a few things that need to be sorted. A couple issues with the window blinds the selling dealer knew about (was noted in the service history) but managed to not mention. Such is the risk of buying before trying. I don't consider any of these serious enough that I would not have wanted to buy the car.

I've searched around and can't find much to aid in the resolution of these so if anybody has suggestions I would be grateful.

1. Rear overhead window blind is stuck open. I can hear the motor running but no movement. Some sort of track issue I am guessing.
2. Rear window blind does not deploy. I can hear a click but no movement.
3. Gas gauge has the intermittent loss of signal so I get the no fuel warning for a brief time then it pops back on. Seems to happen mostly right after a fill up. Once under half tank it hasn't happened. Not sure that is significant. When I have the rear seats out I will poke around the sending units and see if anything is loose but doubt it is that simple. It would have to get a lot worse before I start replacing fuel pumps or sending units.
4. Passenger front door window has a glitch where rolling up "always" takes 3 tries. The first 2 attempts the window will go up maybe 6 inches or so then goes back down. I checked the channel for any obstructions and could not find any evidence of that. Am guessing the motor has some sort of load sensing that gets triggered but why it always goes up on the 3rd attempt is hard to understand at this point.
5. A couple times the alarm has gone off after parked for a long time. Haven't changed out the 5 year old battery so not really concerned here - yet.
6. Got some door speaker rattles to contend with. Read about those and should be easy to resolve.

Overall still really happy with the purchase and enjoying the car.

 

They are a lovely car. I was about to warn about the roof "popping/cracking noises, but it seems as if that has been fixed. I don't know whether you know, but the car has air suspension on the rear wheels only.
I suspect a lot of the small faults are a result of lack of use of the car; a mileage of 14k over 10 years is extremely low indeed.

BTW, congrats on finding such a nice one !

 

Thanks Fraser. Yes the service records show fixes applied for the roof noises and so far so good all is quiet.

Glad that this one only has air in rear shocks. My X350 never gave me any problems but its next owner had to deal with replacing everything with arnott stuff.

I agree that this car just needs to be driven and used more. It had a passenger door problem where the car thought the door was not closed when it was. That one seems to be gone now after using that door for a while. Hoping that the window roll up issue will be similar but don't think that to be likely. Since the fuel gauge issue has been reported here before I am thinking that one won't go away either without some effort.

Am guessing that the rear overhead blind got buggered when the dealer had the headliner redone. The upholstery shop did not do the best overall job. Rear blinds were even a problem in the X350s. Sucks that they still can't get that right in the new model.

 

I decided to sell one of the two custom booster seats.

Its in the marketplace now.

 

These booster seats are great, i'll check it out on the marketplace.

 

And the booster seats are great! It looks like they were either made by Clek originally or customized from one sold by Clek. I just joined to try and PM you about them in marketplace, but I’m a new member and can’t PM yet. Let me know if they are still available. Thank you!!

 

Really nice car. I just picked up a 2012 XJ SC and have the same “third times a charm” issue with front passenger window. Did you identify a fix?

 

Try this procedure to reset both front windows, not just the front passenger window. Use the driver's switches that control both sides.

• Start the engine
• Open the windows
• Fully close the driver's window, then release the switch.
• Again pull the switch to close the window and just hold for two seconds.
• Open the driver's window fully and release the switch.
• Again press the switch to open the window and just hold for two seconds.
• Fully close the passenger's window, then release the switch.
• Again pull the switch to close the window and just hold for two seconds.
• Open the passenger's window fully and release the switch.
• Again press the switch to open the window and just hold for two seconds.

Let us know if that worked.

Good luck!

Stuart

 

I just tried it with no luck. But I will try again later.