looking for info...

 

I have had one of the new XJL 3.0 twin turbo Diesel ( you dont get them over there) since early March and have covered 6000 miles since and loved every bit of it, here is a copy and paste of a piece I have written on the UK forum about it.


Hi, I can only speak from my personal experience and must say that I have had my X350 for 4 1/2 years, I got it when it was 3 1/2 years old and it had 53000 on the clock, it now has 160000 miles. I bought a new Claret colour XJL 3.0 luxury diesel this year, I got it on the 2nd March and have done just over 6000 miles since.
I kept the earlier car so can do back to back comparisons as well.
The new one has been brilliant so far, it attracts so many great comments and looks as they are still a rare sight on the road.
The centre seat rear headroom is less than the old car so If you are carrying 3 in the back then select the shortest to sit in the middle !
The car really goes so well and the midrange oomph is amazing as the engine has so much torque. It has great acceleration and very very good economy for such a huge car, at 90mph it is doing just 2000rpm !
I went for the standard 19" wheels and have been pleased with the comfort level although I think the earlier car may just be a little smoother as it is on 18" wheels, but the difference would probably not show up unless you were constantly swapping from one car to the other as I do.
The gadgets are great but the satnav takes a bit longer to program and enter the details as the screen is slower than the older one.
I love the panoramic roof as do any passengers that have been in the car.
I opted for the upgraded 600W stereo with DAB just incase they decide to turn off the old analogue system and also added the digital and analogue TV tuner. Also added the rear view camera as the rear view is pretty bad due to the narrow rear window, having said that I have had no problems with parking it etc.
The other option was to add the gloss walnut wood as I prefered it to the satin standard wood.
After a month or so I bought a set of the illuminated treadplates and fitted them, they took about 5 minutes each to fit as all the wiring is in place already, I bought them from Ebay and saved quite a bit over the dealer prices and they look really smart at night when you open the doors.
Hope this is of help to you, why dont you try to get a days test drive , I think it will make your mind up for you !

Previous Jaguars : 1985 4.2 Sov, 1988 3.6 Sov, 1990 4.0 Sov, 1994 3.2 Sov, 1998 4.0 Sov lwb, 2000 4.0 Sov lwb.
Current cars : 2011 XJL 3.0 Luxury, 2003 Xj 3.5 se, 1999 Merc E240 estate, 2002 Transit.

 

On behalf of other X350 Owners who are in the market for the new XJ , I would like to say thank you for your reviews

 

sad that it will be 5 years till I can buy one

 

Glad to post my thoughts, thankyou, there are very few people posting about the New XJ in the UK forum, it seems quite a few people in your New XJ forum have had some niggling issues with their cars and I wanted to show people that some of us are really really pleased with our cars and for them not to think that these cars are all full of problems.
Also my X350 is really a great car and I have no thoughts on getting rid of it so whatever Jaguar we drive they are very special cars.

 

I see very few of the new XJs on the road here in the UK, and as stated here, not many reviews. Having said that, there are not all that many X350s around either !

The car market seems to have moved on and the very up-market large saloons don't seem to sell as many as they used to, certainly here in the UK, it seems everybody with money wants huge tank-like SUVs. Quite why so many people want to drive trucks like these I don't know; certainly virtually none of them are used off-road which was once the main selling point.

Anybody on this forum got one and can tell me the secret I am somehow missing ?

 

Can't speak for everyone, but some points to consider and the reason I enjoy:

Driving high off of the ground, with sight above most other vehicles can be addicting
Some drive as well as or better than most sedans
open, spacious interiors
extra cargo space
more room for the family/children

 

I got to drive a few, including a new Suburban, at a test drive event at FedEx Field a month or so back.

I loved it! It's absolutely enormous inside and out, and because of its massive weight, everything it does it does so smoothly. Throttle tip in is much much much smoother than my Jag, and the ride quality at low speeds is buttery smooth. The car really soaks up any imperfection in the road in a way that no lightweight car ever could!

That being said, I would never buy one.

 

That says it all for me.

I had a rental for four days.

Compared to our '04 XJR, it is cramped inside and awkward to enter, the console controls are cheap and flimsy feeling, the doors are harder to reach from inside, and there's literally no position for the seat in which I am comfortable. The steering wheel cluster controls are obtrusive.

I don't care for the new sunroof, but that's not a real usability issue.

Once I turned off some of the silliness, the LCD "instrument cluster" was less annoying. I "reach" the logic of replacing all of the point-to-point wiring for controls and indicators, with a simpler LCD and control cluster, but it definitely needs a choice of "skins"/"themes" (traditional white numbers on black background, for example). Definitely a place where the stylists should be restrained. Gauges should be trivially readable at a glance, and not require pulling your eyes from the road for any length of time to figure out what's going on.

Compared to the J-gate "top gear" selector, the paddle controls were annoying. Once you touched either of them in sport mode, even accidentally, you had to get completely out of sport mode to get any sort of "automatic" behavior back.

 

Actually, pressing and holding either of the shift paddles for a couple seconds will put you back into automatic shift mode for future reference.

 

^ I did not know this!