I am considering a 2011 XJ right now but have a few questions, since I have never owned a jaguar before;

1. Keyless Go- Ok, been reading a little on this "issue" and want to have certain things clarify. I have heard that if you don't lock the door, and say leave it overnight, it can drain your battery, becuase it leaves the car in standby. Is this true? We never lock our doors on our Mercedes with keyless Go and never had this issue. Also, I have heard that even if you do lock the door but leave your key nearby, say within 30 ft., car may still be in standby and drain battery, or even worse car can be unlocked. I can forsee how that can be a problem. If that is true, does that mean that if I am at a convenience store with eh car parked right in the front and i am in the store but within 30 ft, someone can open my door and take something out or even start the car and drive off?

2. Being an electronic geek, can someone explain the capabilities of the entertainment system? I notice there is no DVD changer but there is a hrd drive. Can one load the hard drive with a movie or is it for music only? If so, what movie formats does it accept? DVD vob files? MPG? AVI? MP4?

3. Is there any workaround in allowing the passenger to input navigation while car is in motion (besides voice command)?

4. Finally, not sure if this is allowd here and I apologize if it isnt, but are you guys getting any sort of a discount off MSRP with this new model? and if so about how much off sticker?

Thank you

 

Hi superflysocal,

I can't answer most of these but will I'll try and shed some light where I can:

1. I'm not sure on this one, but I have read the same as you. I keep my car in the driveway, locked and more than 30ft from the key, so I wouldn't suffer these problems. It seems like something they must surely fix pronto if true. I will say that generally the keyless entry works very well. I usually keep my key in my laptop bag and the doors open fine as I walk up to it, and the car starts fine with the bag on the back seat. This is in contrast to my wife's BMW which is very particular about where the key must be to open doors, start etc....but your Mercedes may be fine too.

2. I too am a bit of an A/V geek, but on the audio rather than video side. The sound system (B&W 1200W) is superb, and it plays DVDs, but as far as I can see, the only use for the hard drive (so far) is to be able to rip CD's (from the onboard CD player/drive) into 10 "virtual CD changer" slots. I have all my whole home music library in digital format (AIFF and ALAC) and would like to be able to transfer some of these songs directly to the hard drive without the tedious process of having the car rip the CD's. Regarding formats, I am ignorant when it comes to video (although there is some reference to DIVx in the manual). My experience with audio formats, however, has been very hit and miss. It is laughable that the handbook suggests that you use uncompressed audio formats to take advantage of the high fidelity system, but when I tried this with songs on a USB stick I find that it the system doesn't read any lossless formats (the best I got it to accept was around 400kbps WMA). It does, however, play ALAC (apple lossless) files from the iPod. The point of all this is that I would not count on much flexibility with video files (YET) or count on finding anyone who can actually explain what the system currently does.

3. I didn't know that the passenger could not input navigation when the car is in motion...

4. Can't help much here. I doubt there is much of a discount....it seems quite hard to find these cars. After a test drive I didn't want to wait 3 months or so for a custom order, but when my dealer tried to find cars meeting my (fairly broad) exterior/interior color prefs there was nothing available on the east coast. I ended up buying the demo model which pretty much fit the bill except for the ivory interior, which I can live with..I got a few $k off because it was a demo with 3k miles.

Overall, it is a awesome car, with great potential when they sort out and upgrade the functionality of the user interface (hard drive, audio/video formats etc), but I wouldn't buy the car on the basis of the electronic goodies (yet).

 

I ordered my car (XJL Supercharged Indigo/London Tan/Navy with rear entertainment and polished wheels) and received about a 5% discount. Delivery is scheduled for late November. Can't wait!

I hope that most of the bugs are worked out by the time a take delivery.

 

Two words;

Maserati

Quattroporte.

The new XJ is just not perfect yet give Jaguar another 2 years and it will be an awesome ride but then Merc will come up with the 2012 S class so XJ won't be the best ever, too bad

 

from what i read and from my experience with my 2011 XJL supercharged I still believe the XJL is $ for $ the best car in it's class. One thing is to talk about the nuances of the a/v and the input layouts what is completely different issue is to drive one. Anyone who may be interested in this vehicle must drive it. IMHO, none of the German made have the beautiful style and presence of this car ......

 

I agree. I took my Jag out for a drive yesterday on some curvy backroads and the performance and handling of this car is unreal. The sound of that V8 SC at full throttle, and the warp speed at which you can pass people is just amazing.

 

thanks for the advice guys
Yes, I understand this thing drives like a champ, have test driven it, even the normally aspirated engine is great.

But you have to understand this is prob for the wife and thus, comfort, luxury and A/V far outweighs car performance.

I am surprised the keyless thing is not brought up more around here if it is true. Most people I know who owns this type of car will keep it in a garage and probably have a "mudroom" of some sort where they throw the key that is right next to the garage usually within 30 feet.

It's ironic someone brought up maserati quattroporte. I am not sure if I stated it in my original post, but that is what we are wanting to trade in, an 07 QP executive. It drives like a champ, love the purr of the engine, and the interior is the most stunning of any car I have seen. But the FM radio can't even pick up half the station around town, no ipod connection, no factory satellite option, and the navigation doesn't even display street names.

 

I traded in an '07 Maserati QP Sport GT on my XJ--no comparison on the technology (no street level detail on the nav on the QP just blew me away), the car was considerably slower with a harsher ride, and I genuinely like the look of the XJ better both inside and out (and I thought the QP got looks from everyone--I am forever finding people gawking at the XJ). I have no issues with the audio or nav in the XJ--I don't use an Ipod, so the ability to download 10 CD's at a time is adequate for me for in car listening and the sound quality is great. I have had no issues with the keyless go. If they could just fix the roof popping I would be a happy camper!

 

I read one article that mentioned the tachometer display cannot refresh fast enough under hard acceleration and so is useless in manual shifting mode. Can any of you who have the car comment on whether this is the case?

Thanks!

 

dealer let me take an xjl SC home for a night.

Ride is definitely great.

It does play divx movies on a dvd disc which is very cool. I don't understand why we can't do that with a usb flsh drive (audio only) or save the divx files onto the hard drive.

anyone know of a module to enable video in motion for this car?

 

I read this too (about the tach needle not moving fast enough) but have not noticed it in practice. The car has so much low end torque that the number of times you will be taking it to the redline in manual mode are few and far between (and I am performance oriented as you can see by my other car). If there is a slight delay it is minuscule and definitely not an issue (I honestly haven't really noticed it). If this was a Ferrari or Porsche GT3 and would see a lot of track time, maybe a problem, but for this car, no.

 

Thanks for the reply, Ngregson, and good news.

 

Its a great car if you are looking for handling dynamics and performance. I am a fan of the 2011 XJ... its pretty sick. Post some pics of it if you do end up getting one.

 

buy one that has all the fixes from the factory. My fixes have been a nightmare.

 

How do I know which ones have or have not fixes from the factory? Any VIN number range?