Hello all,

It's been quite a while since I've posted here as I have been dealing with a serious spinal injury from an epidural injection gone wrong.
As some of you may remember, I had one of the first 2012 XKR's on order but was waffling between waiting for the new XE (I knew the XE would be a stunner and it looks as if it is) and also more importantly VERY concerned that the spinal condition could get worse (it’s already turned pretty bad), so I canceled the order and have been driving a rental car for many months. In the interim my poor Father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer ...it's really been a very tough time for me and our family.

I recently spoke with some close friends that told me I truly should buy and enjoy the new Jag while I can as we all don't know what tomorrow will hold, especially in my case, so I went for it.

My dealer found me a stunning 2012 XKR silver over charcoal with 20" Nevis wheels and red calipers, the only thing this car doesn't have that I ordered in the black one was the jet black headliner; the car had 8 miles on it prior to my test drive this evening.

I hope I'll be able to get in and out of it ok in the long run, as the rental car was a Caddy DTS which worked well.

The dealership is detailing the car tomorrow as it was trucked over from another dealership and I will pick it up in the afternoon. I used to love to wash and wax my cars but I'll never be able to do that again.

I will post pics tomorrow.

I hope all of you are doing well.

Best,

RJC

 

RJC - good to see you around the place, but so sorry to hear of your personal health issues and those of your family.

I hope you enjoy the car when you get it and look forward to you sharing a few pics to show her off some........

Best

 

Thanks very much Jim, I really needed a boost and the car should help a bit; the cooled seats are also helpful for the burning in my thighs.

 

Never fun to hear of tough times falling on good people. I have no doubt an XKR will brighten your future.
For what its worth, if you feel the ride is a tad jarring, you may consider dumping the 20's in favor of 19's or even 18's just to give you a little sidewall flex. Handling may suffer slightly (in some ways for the better in my opinion) but a proper set of 18's will take those sharp road irregularities and smooth them out like silk. Your spine would thank you, and your smiles behind the wheel wouldn't dim any. Food for thought.

Getting in and out however is a tough one. Even I wish my coupe had a grab handle over the door to help and I consider myself in fair shape.

I can't even imagine what it would be like not to detail my own car...yeow...

Anyhow, enjoy and post pics!

Peace
Vince

 

Thanks very much Vince.

I was to learn after the fact that the car does not have auto entry exit seating but the sales rep said just use one of the other presets for that.

I can handle the ride as I was quite impressed with the ride quality of the 20's and luv the Nevis design.

Oh how I loved to wash and wax my car and my gals too; I look at my collection of washes, waxes, cloths, buffers etc and just feel sad; unfortunately I've lost the ability to do much more of the everyday life things I used to take for granted.

I'll take some good pics tommorow at delivery and post tomorrow night.

 

Some say that the meaning of life is "one damned thing after another". The things that make it bearable are the people we love and the passions we indulge ourselves. I'm sure your XKR falls into the latter category. Good on you for understanding that.

 

Thanks tarheal.

 

Hi RJC,
Sorry to hear about your father's condition -- it's so hard watching our parents suffer through the ravages of old age.

As for your other issue, I too have spinal pain and went through several cortisone epidural injections. I still have the pain but mine doesn't sound nearly as bad as yours.

I had always imagined buying a XK/XKR upon my retirement (in about 7 yrs). However, last year I found myself with a little extra spending money from a consulting job that I do on weekends. So I contacted my Jag dealer and he told me that they just received a '12 XKR in Azurite Blue (my fav color). After the test drive, my wife and I discussed whether we should buy it. Our deciding factor was this: I have my health now - but in 7 years, I may not be able to drive a car like the XKR -- so why not enjoy it now. Needless to say, we bought it the next day and are in total bliss. I'm not concerned about new models -- my XKR turns enough heads already.

Enjoy your ride.

Mike

 

eagerly awaiting those pictures.....

 

RJC,

Sorry to hear you're going through the fire of life. I honestly wish you well and truly hope you enjoy your new XKR as I'm sure you will. Good luck and God bless!!

 

Thanks Mike and Chris your kind thoughts are most appreciated.

I’ll fill everyone in on the dangers of epidurals another time as you guys should really know the truth about these things; Bloomberg had an excellent article on the dangers of these things about 4 weeks ago and I'll share it soon.

Here's some pics of the car,one from today and one from last night, unfortunately delivery turned into a nightmare as the salesperson did not enter the info into the computer correctly this morning and the F&I guy wasn't even familiar with jaguar's current lease programs! They created a total nightmare for me and my pain level was very high while they kept me waiting around for well over an hour listening to the sales guy and the f and I guy go around in circles with each other (they actually printed the contract 4 or more different times and still couldn't get it right) I wasn't even offered a glass of water. Secondly the car was poorly detailed as the paint was not even smooth to the touch, I discovered the car was produced in July of 2011 so no doubt the paint was contaminated from sitting outside for so long and needed a clay baring but the detail guy just waxed over the rough paint! To make matters worse I was never even offered an apology for the whole fiasco by the sales guy. Today was supposed to be a 15 min visit as the credit app and income etc were already done. I finally was so disgusted I walked out; to make matters even worse my gal drove all the way over there from her office way across town to meet me, she couldn’t believe what she was witnessing when she got there. In addition I gave these guys explicit instructions to keep the miles under 10, the car was trucked over with 8 so I allowed for 2 miles to get gas etc, when I went to test the car yesterday it had 12 which I just let go but the gas station is +/- about a mile away and when I returned back from my drive it had 13; today they told me the car now has 22 miles on it. I do not buy new high perf cars with other people's test drive mileage or the detail/valet guy going for a 9 mile thrill ride. Most of the time during these tester/dealer miles the car is never more than 20 feet out of the dealership and a cold engine is redlined; not good.
So, the GM called me this evening after hearing about the horror show and they are trying to put something together to compensate me for everything. I'll know more tomorrow but I've got a very bad taste from this whole thing. The worst part is my sales guy knows I'm a spine patient and didn't seem to care I was put through hell, I even told him early on today that just standing there I was in serious pain. I did finally receive a call from him tonight apologizing but that was after the GM got involved; btw my sales guy is also an asst mgr; prior to today he was fine. Regard for the welfare of the customer was no where to be found today. Maybe this is a bad omen...I'm exhausted.

 

Nice pics, I send you my best wishes for your choice

 

Congrats....looks great!

 

I hope all the drama the dealership is putting you through gets smoothed out. I do believe you did the right thing by purchasing at this time. Part of the reason I finally bought my dream car was that at my age at the time (53) I was already seeing a good number of my friends and family getting sick (or worse) and finding themselves unable to do all the things they always loved to do.

Like you, detailing my car is therapy for me. Most of my friends and family have come to the conclusion that I must own every car care product ever produced and fully know I spend my weekends carefully going over each of my vehicles (especially the Jag). If I could not do this anymore, I just don't know what I would do...

In any case, enjoy your new acquisition. Seems to me you have earned it...

 

Thanks all.

I have not heard back from the GM just yet. If it's true someone went for a 9 mile joy ride after my explicit instructions I will not be pleased. It appears of the three things I asked the sales guy to do 1) deliver car with under 10 miles, 2) do an extra good detail waxing 3) confirm all #'s etc before I got there, all went ignored. I don't know about everyone else but for me when buying a $109,000.00 car I'd expect the customer's requests to be honored fully...these guys are 0 -3 plus all the unprofessionalism from yesterday. I have not contacted Jaguar NA but I'm truly getting tempted. I was also not happy to learn this car has been sitting around since July 2011; that's 7 mos and a lot of baking in the FL sun, it's no wonder the paint felt rough even after waxing.

 

Heard from GM, going there this afternoon to see him; I'll report back. I'm in way too much pain having to deal with this stuff

 

RJC
You might want to consider that at some dealerships the salesman is little more than a jumped up screener and that your messages through him are mostly lost. I have been in several negotiations where the sales manager came in and took the salesman's chair and I didn't see the bloke again till much later, after I had seen the sales Mgr and Finance Dude.

I really don't know how it is with your dealer but over at Jag of Tampa the salesman did it all. No messages in and out of the office, all paper work including finance, title etc, etc. was done by one guy -- the salesman. That was an impressive thing to see and I only saw it that once..

Most dealerships will not tolerate salesman giving orders to the Serv Dept for good reason. The Serv Dept back charges the Sales Dept so only the Sales Mgr or Gen Mgr can authorize non warranty serv to cars "owned" by the Sales Dept..

The point is, after you think you have a deal, confirm it with the Sales Mgr together with all special instructions "in writing". Buy the way, if you are dealing with Jag of Orlando, my experienced with them is that they will go the extra mile for a dissatisfied customer.

 

Thanks THC, I did have everything in writing and my sales guy is an sales mgr...it was just a comedy of errors.

Met with GM today, great guy, he fixed everything and they saved me more money to compensate me for all the trouble. The car was properly detailed this time and the finish is smooth as glass. The extra mileage was explained as a seperate trip for PDI and another for gas.

I hope and pray the Good Lord willing, I don't get worse so I can still keep driving as I really like the car...why did I get the R lol...way to much power.

Some questions

1) Why is it when the ac is set to the floor setting only, cold air also comes out the defroster vents and fogs up my windshield? On the floor/face setting less air comes out the defroster vents but still some bleeds out. I need the cold air blowing on my feet as I have great pain in my left foot thanks again to the botched epidural
The Caddy DTS rental car worked just fine on the floor/face setting with no air escaping from the defroster vents; I'd imagine something's wrong. Can one of you guys please try this on your car and report back? thanks so much.

2) Why no coolant temp gauge?

3) Why no light in the center storgae console?

4) Why no overhead LED reading lights which give off a nice cool blue especially since there's LEDs over the license plate?

5) Why no split screen radio/navi combo choice?

6) MPG on way home was 10.9 driving very consevatively, is this the norm?

Thanks,

Here's some pics taken right after delivery.

 

Hiya! I don't have answers for everything, but I have a couple for you.

1 -- I dunno on this one. I've never done what you're describing, but I WILL comment that it's ability to defrost outstrips every other car I have. Coming out of the gym on a chilly morning will instantly fog up the windows in my other cars, but the Jag is very quick to dehumidify the air.

2 -- Also dunno. But I didn't realize this one until AFTER I bought it. Not that it would have changed the purchase decision, but it's irritating. Especially since you can pull the temperature via the ODBD port.

3 -- There is an amber LED up near the convertible controls that shines down to the ashtray / center console area. But yes, no light inside the armrest console.

4 -- Personally I prefer the color temp of incandescent to most white LEDs for reading. Too much blue makes it hard to focus. There are aftermarket bulbs for this tho. 2.7k white LEDs are finally becoming available for more applications.

5 -- your navi stuff can show up as instructions in the LCD panel between the two main gauges. Then leave radio up on main screen. Not exactly what you're after, but it's pretty close. In all honesty, my main gripe with the radio display is that it won't simultaneously show artist/track for either ipod or sirius.

6 -- My worst ( I calculate by hand, but compare against what the XKR says, which is usually only off by about half an mpg ) was 13.5 mpg... and that was my fillup yesterday. Winter blends tend to be a little worse than summer ones. My best is about 19ish at 70 with the top down. Typically I get around 15 if I'm doing mostly city driving. That 13.5 was all short around town trips with a couple of 'shenanigan' type blasts up freeway on ramps. They're hard to resist due to the awesome noise they make. I do keep track of my MPG on Fuelly, which is a publicly available database, so you can compare there. I expect that you need a tank or two for the engine to settle down a bit. ;D

Congrats on your purchase! I had a few bad things go wrong during the purchase of mine too. But every time I go out to the garage I forget all about those issues. Straight up Sex on Wheels -- the XKs are gorgeous.

 

The overhead dome light is very easy to replace with LED bulbs if you don't like the yellowish stock incandescent bulbs. I replace them with white LEDs a few years ago and all you need to do is with both hands on either side of the overhead consol,gently pull down and it will come out as they are held up by spring clips. Similar to this video from frame 0:40 to 0:46: How to change middle roof console in Range Rover L322 / Vogue - YouTube
Once you remove the consol, you'll have access to the LED bulbs. Just remember, if ou install the bulb and it doesn't work, turn it around and it will work as some LED bulbs only can go one way. You can also replace the footwell bulbs and trunk bulb with LEDs. No canbus needed for interior bulbs. Luckily the XKs are easy to remove the overhead consol as I just did all LEDs on my Range Rover and it was a PITA. Here's some pics of all LEDs in my RR. Much brighter and whiter than stock. Unfortunately my XKR is stored at the other house and so I can't take any pics of the LEDs in that car.