Has anyone found a way to see clearly through the coupe rear hatch glass which has the heating element?? Could the heating element be removed or? Because I love my XKR and I love driving it somewhat aggresively (yea!), I would really like more than the side mirrors to keep tabs on what is behind me!

 

If you drive fast enough you won't need to worry about whatever is behind you catching up!

 

For some time I have been keeping an eye out for a rear/side view camera system that could be integrated into the video screen. So far, no luck. The visibility out the rear of our XKs is one of the few shortcomings of our cars.


Still it's a small price to pay for the privilege of ownership of an XK/XKR coupe.

 

+1 to poor rear visibility in the Coupe.

This comparison of my XK8 and XK illustrates the point:



The horizontal red lines drawn across the rear quarters at eyeline height show the increased width of the body and shading on the rear screen makes the effective width three times greater on the XK.

Graham

 

Nice illustration!

 

I don't share the opinion on rear visibility. I think its fine. And I do like the comments about driving faster:-)
And no, I think those cameras belong in mini vans;-b.

Cheers!

 

The heating element is in the glass and I don't think that you could scrape or razor blade the element off.

Personally, I really wouldn't attempt it. It is there for a reason, and rear window defrosters are really nice to have.

As for the view or field of vision from the back window, the convertible model is even worse.

I added convex mirrors to/on my outside mirrors which removes all blind spots from the driver on both the left and right sides. They are easy to apply and very inexpensive.

 

 

I'm glad Guy in Ottawa was able to clear that up for me. For an insane moment there I thought there could be more than 1 opinion. LOL

 

Try telling him that.



Graham

 

Interesting. My eyes simply don't see the heating element wires when I glance in the rear view mirror. I have come across this phenomenon before where some people just cannot drive in the rain. Their eyes and signal processor (brain) go crazy trying to decide whether to focus up the road or on the drops on the screen. Had a friend like that in England, not a place to be so afflicted.

As for visibility in general, I would agree that the old XK looks to be better. However, my 08 model has far better over the shoulder visibility than the Volvo saloon I had before. Before that was a Firebird which was not that great to see out of, but that damned Volvo was worse.

I set up my mirrors in a different way these days. I have the door mirrors angled out to see into the adjacent lane. When a car leaves the coverage of my interior mirror it just appears in the side mirror. Reduces those rear 3/4 blind spots considerably. The old mirror setup of seeing the side of your car in the mirror is old hat and unsuitable for big US freeways IMHO.

 

Since all he has is a diesel XF, he'd have trouble keeping up - but his mates in the chopper wouldn't...

Apocryphal "Jags & coppers" tale: I was doing some work with Lancashire Police many years ago, and my ownership of a Jag came up. They told me that, at about 4AM on a dark night, shortly after the XK220 was announced, something was spotted on the northbound M6 gantry cameras. It was hard to see because it was moving so fast, but they finally got an image of a 220 with no plates, doing something over 200MPH. It vanished in the general direction of Carlisle.

About half an hour later, it reappeared, southbound at the same velocity. I asked if they'd tried to stop it. The answer I got was something along the lines of "Well, the M6 was mostly empty, the guy was slowing down when he came across other traffic, he seemed to know what he was doing, and it would have been a major exercise to catch him safely, so we just let him go". Apparently a subsequent complaint to Coventry elicited a denial of any knowledge, but it didn't happen again.

 

Thank you GGG as always good information.

 

Never had an issue with the rear window. Can see fine out of it.

 

Thought it could use a camera but mine was tinted.

 

Hmmmmm........ I didn't think anyone was looking!

 

Try checking the Over-The-Shoulder view in a ragtop F-Type. Horrendous. With the top UP, of course...