Good day Gents! I'm visiting from the X308 forum. I currently have a 2003 Jag XJR which I absolutely love. I have been contemplating changing vehicles, and after looking at numerous options, I'm very seriously considering staying with Jag. I'm currently looking at a 2005 XJ8-L, with 83K km's ( 52K miles). The asking price is $17,900. The car is loaded, with DVD and Nav.

I have a couple of questions - Has anyone here gone from a X-308 XJR to a X-350 XJ8? Did you notice a vast difference? I especially like the performance of the supercharged R, but the newer Jags are lighter and the regular aspirated XJ8 has had a horsepower increase. What differences should I expect?

As far as reliability, I have done some checking (as well as reading some posts on this forum) and the 2004-2005 seem to have a good reliability rating. Are there major expenses that I should be expecting in the next couple of years?

Finally, the X-308 forum there is a post which gives a list of things to check for when purchasing a used X-308. I wasn't able to find anything similar on this forum. Does it exist?

I find these forums are invaluable sources of data - and I really appreciate all the information I have gathered. Kudos to you!!

 

The air suspension compressor is a high probable, unless recently done. Thse things do not last all that long, but are now a reasonable price as service exchange items.

Other thing could be a transmission software reload to cure clunky changes which eventually flag up as "transmission fault". Not a costly thing to fix, just a nuisance.

Also, although not a reliability issue, there could be cosmetic paintwork faults manifesting themselves as bubbling under the paint. The leading edge of the trunk lid is one place, and also on the D pillars, and corners of doors. These are due to Jaguar not having got fully up to speed on painting aluminium when they started building the X350s and for some time afterwards. Not a real bad problem, but they just don't look good and like all body and paintwork, can be expensive to fix because its all labour on bodywork issues.

I have had my car since May 2010, and have done 15k starting at 30k on purchase, and very few faults apart from the above. Beautiful car, very comfortable to drive. Suspension parts can be expensive, but the Jaguar aftermarket is now active with these cars so prices are a lot less if you use the internet. The suspension parts are mostly common to the S-type

 

The throttle body is another typical item, if it hasn't been replaced already.
But it's less than $1000.

 

I bought a 2005 XJ8 with 46,000 miles on the odometer. I have added 9,000 miles since. Absolutely no problems and I got 33 MPG on my first road trip. Aluminum and more recent engineering make a big difference.

Dave
2005 XJ8 Topaz over Ivory
2002 X-type