Don't know if it's the right place to share this , but today I went for my first ride in my Hometown with the top down.
And I greatly enjoyed the ride while thanks to the Sport mode and F19 fuse off, I listened to the supercharged V8 ..

I must say I was a litle bit nervous when I had to park on the mall parking.
As you may know, France is REALLY in decline... We are seriously getting poorrer and poorer and everyone being fedup with the more and more autoritarian power heading the state, the situation in the society is described by most experts as explosiv, the serious riots from last months showed it ...
French being quite jealous about money, jobs and all... I was scared about how people from my simple 100.000 soul town might react seing this demonstrativ car parking (even though there's a lot of Porsches in the area).
And what I love about the XKR over the 911 I was thinking about when looking for a car, is that, yes, even in this context, her class and elegance touched people!
In 2 occasions I had guys (older ones) coming to me after parking to express how they were glad to see "a james bondesque car right in front of them" or "a legendary jaguar parking ".
It really moved me as I only had her for 10 days and I clearly felt these guys were as happy seeing and hearing her, as I would be if I crossed one. I felt I was sharing with them a piece of my joy.
On several occasions there even was guys driving their show-off too expensive SUVs letting me the turn on the crossing to look at her.

That was really really pleasing and I'm just glad to share it with you.
I love her a lot because to me , she's humble in her way.
As my brother in law said "she's different from a Porsche or such cars, when she appears, you feel like Queen Elisabeth is entering the room... When a 911 or a BMW M or an AMG arrive, it feels like Macron is entering... On a side there's a strong and elegant legitimate supremacy , on another one there's demonstrative freshly bought power".

I'M glad that thanks to your forum, I feels that even though my "old" lady(110.000 Miles) has to have some cares and work, I made the right choice. A new story begin.
Thanks.

 

Nothing like a Jag - lots of Porsche's and Merc's around.

Only thing I'd trade up for is an Aston Martin.

 

The older French people seem to love Jaguars ..... but there are two sides to this.

Years ago I drove my XK8 convertible with my two small boys to visit the Normandy D-Day beaches. We arrived in Arromanches and parked near the reception of the campsite nearest the town centre. I went into the office and asked, in my poor French, if we could pitch our tent. The old chap explained that the site was full but we should try another site which was further outside the town. I thanked him and as I left he followed me to the door and I walked over to the Jaguar. He then suddenly called me back and said "What a beautiful Jaguar. You should have said. Please put your tent on this patch of grass (right outside the office) and park your Jaguar here (right outside the window). We stayed there for the whole week.

The downside of owning a Jaguar in France is that I had a set of genuine Jaguar shiny metal tyre valve caps with a growler logo set into the end. By the end of that holiday, all four caps had vanished. I replaced the whole set when I was back in the UK but a couple of years later we made a return trip to Normandy with my Wife and the kids this time. Guess what? Yep, all four tyre caps vanished again. I've never lost a single one in the UK. Never mind, it's flattery by other means. 😉

Richard