My neighbor across the street is a very nice man. He was the first one to greet me when I moved into the neighborhood and he always waves and has a smile. He came by yesterday and gave me a very nice compliment 'Mike, I have to tell you that I just can't stop looking at your car, it is just beautiful'. I thanked him and said 'why don't you treat yourself and get one'. He currently drives a Honda Odyssey mini-van, his kids are all grown up and it's just him and his wife now. He also has the money to spend.


He pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows and sighed..."I really do want one but I heard they give a lot of problems." I then said 'the last time we spoke you told me that you had to replace the steering rack in your Honda Odyssey"..he said 'yeah that's true'. I then said ' and before that you had to replace a sensor on the transmission on the Honda Odyssey" and he said 'yeah that's true too' and then I said ' You also said that the electric sliding door has started to give you problems" and he said 'yeah that's true as well'..


I then raised my eyebrows, pursed my lips and looked at him in the eyes and said 'I was thinking about getting a Honda but I hear they give a lot of problems'...


He gave a wry smile...and got my drift. He then said ' I need to go to Jaguar to give one test drive'...I said no need to 'here is the key fob to mine - go for it'. He was very pleasantly surprised at my offer. Twenty minutes later he comes back with a smile from ear to ear and and tells his wife 'honey...we're getting a Jag'.


Happy ending.

 

Nice story
Yeah theres alot of false infomation out there about certain specialist cars.
I see your xK is BRG, is there a picture of it i may see? Cant say i have seen one.

 

I agree about the myth's of the Jaguar brand. My 2009 Jaguar XKR PE Convertible has been flawless and no reported problems. Although the 2009 XKR only has 18,000 miles on it, the vehicle has passed the test of time without any problems.

I think any owner should have confidence in the brand. While we hear from time to time, problems or some mechanical issues, I am sure they are small compared to the amount of Jags on the road today.

 

Well played MichaelO! you just made your jag more reliable by having spare parts across the street, and a buyer for all your stock stuff when you do the upgrades.

 

Nice!

 

Great story. People are thinking of the pre Ford ownership days. Since then Jaguar was forced to get their QA up to modern factory standards and get rid of Lucas Electronics, which was the reason for substandard electronical performance from Jaguar. Their engines were usually very good but after Ford bought them they were forced to just make incremental improvements to the 4.2 engine resulting in a pretty bulletproof engine. Good for us!!!

 

ten bucks says Michael never has to buy those pesky overpriced valve stem covers that seem to disappear. Cause the other guys will always fall off in Michael's driveway.

 

Funny, but I bought my XK from a Honda dealership.

The guy that was supposed to my paperwork was going over a departing Honda Oddessy in a departure area right next to my Jaguar XK. The slightly graying business suite owner of the new mini-van was a bit jealous of the Jaguar. He said he wished could get a car like that.

I didn't have the heart to tell him I was paying about half of what his optioned mini-van cost.

 

I am really glad to see most of the jag owners here standing by their brand and speaking positively about their experience and the reliability of their vehicles, but there is some truth to the reputation Jag has


For example the classifieds here are littered with junked jags, blown head gaskets, blown engines, blown trannys, the used sale value of many jags from the 90's and early 2000's is very low due to the problems some models have faced.


Ive had two uncles who like jags and owned a few , one of them had a 96 or 97 xj6 and it caught fire while stopped at a red light, for no reason, just electrical glitch, him and his daughter got out okay but car was torched and a write off


Second uncle had an earlier model xj, not sure of the year..itlasted about 6 months before it was scrapped due to multiple (serious) issues.


Its good to stand by your brand but its also good to be honest about the pros and cons...these XK's from what I can see seem really well built, and should be as they are one of the flagship models, but scroll back a few years and look at some other lower end models, and its not hard to see why people are a little concerned about buying one

 

Fortune favors the Bold. Jaguar has always been the privilege of the adventurous.

p.s. Perhaps he was from Utah and laughing at your ability to only carry one companion.

 

No matter how good Jaguar builds their cars, there are three things the typical consumer will always think: 'they always break down', 'they are very expensive to repair' and "they sure do look good".


This is a fact here in the USA - not sure how it is in the rest of the world.


Does Jaguar deserve this reputation? Yes and No. For many years in the USA the cars that most mechanics serviced were GM's, Fords and Chryslers. There were not too many Jaguar mechanics around [and there still aren't]. So quite often the average garage didn't even want to fix it or if they did try to fix it, they actually made things worse. Let's face it, the twin gas tanks on the xj6 and the three valves that made them function properly drove most mechanics to insanity. Then on the other side of the street, the foreign car mechanics in the USA worked mostly on German cars: Mercedes, BMW's and Audi's [and this stands true today]


Jaguar was left out in the cold. It didn't help that there weren't too many Jaguar dealers around either. Even today there are not too many independent foreign shops that will take a Jaguar in. There is one by my house, but even he tells me that he doesn't really want to work on my car and to go to the Jaguar dealer. He would be much happier with a BMW repair than a Jaguar repair.


Jaguar did not help itself either. The Series III, while a beautiful car, had those inboard rotors and brakes which most mechanics did not want to touch [not to mention the cost]. The xj40 was a disaster the day it rolled off the assembly line. Nobody liked how it looked, the air suspension was a nightmare, the door handles just broke off in your hand and the resale value was horrendous. Let's not even get started on the 12 cylinder engine - yes it was amazing but we live in a V8 world.


And before you say 'but all car companies have these sort of problems' yes they do, but back in the day, Jaguar took an extremely bad beating on their reputation as a reliable car.


Today Jaguar is delivering their best automobiles ever and Tata is doing a phenomenal job at the helm. Their cars are not only beautiful and modern, they are also reliable! Today Jaguar has something for everybody: two door cars, four door cars, diesels and even an SUV!!!


With all that said, Jaguar however is still not perceived as a reliable car to the general public, it still unfairly carries that old reputation with it, and it needs to work on that tainted part of its image. It is as reliable as any other modern car today - maybe even more so!

 

Yea yea yea, bla bla bla
Now, to repeat my question. Have you a picture of your BRG KX

 

Really??? For my 2010 XKR with 60k miles, I've replaced the battery and one of the wheel pressure sensors that Discount paid for just cuz they are cool.
That's all.
So where is your "long way to go"?????

 

Apparently you misunderstood what I wrote:


"has Jaguar escaped their reputation of the old days of being unreliable and unaffordable? I would say things have improved a bit, but they still have a long way to go. "
I said 'reputation'. Of course their cars are reliable today [which is what I wrote] , but to the public this is still not true. They still need to work on their image in that area. I updated my thread to make this clear.

 

I totally agree with what you wrote MM regarding reputation, resale, reality.

I also think that anyone on this forum, or general public, that believes any years Jag is as reliable as a Honda Civic or Accord is smoking something and not sharing it. Love my Jag, my only issue was one that I created and thankfully it only cost me @$250... but I am not delusional to think it is as reliable as a Camry or most Hondas... we all have anecdotal stories but statistically the numbers ain't there let's not kid ourselves here replacing emotion/love for our cars with reality. How many X150's are going 200-400K miles with virtually zero maintenance like Honda's??? Any one? Bueller? Bueller? Also I'd much rather face a repair bill on a Honda than a Jag (and I do most all my own maintenance). Cost of purchase and ownership is FAR less with most of the Japanese choices and there's reasons we bought what we did but let's keep it real

 

Reputation is based on a few factor, some reality (previous iterations using Lucas electronics and such) that were just terribly unreliable, and some being based upon pure ignorance (jealousy, anecdotal stories, etc). Jag seems to be relying on pure "word of mouth" versus going directly after this both in even better addressing manufacturing/production (example - the water pump issues in 5.0L X150 amongst other minor nagging issues) where they could step up in customer support (think of how great Amazon or Costco are when dealing with returns/issues, they go above and beyond assuring the customer is happy). Aside from a couple mentions here Lexus has the reputation of taking care of their customers (I've witnessed this myself to my surprise a few years back). So manufacturers CAN directly address this through support but can also address this by marketing - showing statistically how they compare to previous years, how they've improved, and how they compare to their direct competitors in terms of likelihood to buy another, average repairs in first couple years of ownership, etc which they have not touched upon. Audi still suffers from their Audi 5000 debacle which destroyed their resale, Mercedes is thought to build great reliable cars (that changed years ago), a lot of "reputation" is illusion and thankfully that has allowed me and others to afford this price-point and enjoy a great car

 

Jaguar was drowning in antiquated manufacturing processes, poor quality control, and a well-deserved reputation for unreliability until Ford came to their rescue and bought them. It took a while, but under Ford's leadership and management Jaguar went from worst to (almost) first in J.D. Powers quality ratings. Among other things, out went long-time electrical supplier Lucas, replaced by Ford. This improvement in quality carried over to Tata, when they purchased Jaguar from Ford.

This is history worth reading: http://www.autonews.com/article/2003...t-fixed-jaguar In case the link no longer works, here's the article:

June 2, 2003 @ 12:01 am
Bradford Wernle

In the late 1980s, Ford strategists took a good look at the booming luxury-car market and realized they needed a global luxury brand to rival BMW and Mercedes-Benz. So they went shopping.

First on the list was Alfa Romeo. But Ford lost Alfa Romeo when Fiat intervened, with a little help from the Italian government. Fiat didn't really want Alfa, but didn't want Ford getting it either.

Next came Saab and Jaguar. Ford was negotiating to buy both luxury-car companies at the same time. But Harold "Red" Poling, then Ford chairman, decided Ford couldn't manage two acquisitions at once, so Ford backed out of the Saab talks.

That left Ford to pay $2.5 billion for Jaguar, a legendary brand that had limped along through the 1980s as an independent after being mismanaged nearly to extinction by British Leyland. Jaguar had only two cars, and nothing in development but an ill-conceived sports car called F-type.

And Jaguar was being wooed by other manufacturers at the time, most notably General Motors. John Egan, the Jaguar chairman who engineered the sale of Jaguar to Ford, said Jaguer and GM had been working together on plans for a joint car at the time Ford started buying shares.

"Ford's initial aggressive takeover was premature in that we were talking to other companies," said Egan. "When Ford contacted us we realized the game was up. We wanted to be sure we got a good price for shareholders. We came to the conclusion that of all companies interested, Ford was best."

With its antiquated factory and shoddy quality, it was something of a miracle Jaguar had survived the decade. That it did was a tribute to the power of the Jaguar name and the memory of the great cars from its past.

"Even though the company wasn't in good shape, the brand was still in good shape," said Bruce Blythe, then Ford's chief European strategist and co-negotiator of the Jaguar deal.

Had Ford planners realized how bad things were at Jaguar the company, they might have had second thoughts about taking on Jaguar the brand.

"It wasn't that Jaguar's quality was bad, it was horrendous," said Bill Hayden, the tough east London manufacturing man Ford sent in as first Jaguar chairman in the new era.

"It was a terrible organization making terrible cars," he added.

A matter of faith

Hayden had built a fearsome reputation at Ford as a very demanding taskmaster managing Ford's European manufacturing operations. His first job was to make Jaguar people believe Ford could help them save themselves.

"My concern was that, with the exception of a few people, most of the Jaguar people - their belief about Ford Motor Co. was pretty poor," said Hayden.

"Second, they didn't really seem to understand what a mess they were in. They seemed to think just being Jaguar, somehow they would survive. Somehow I had to get their attention."

Hayden got their attention by making a comment that became a legend around Jaguar's base in Coventry, England. Hayden said the only factory he had ever seen that was worse than Browns Lane was the Gorky car plant in the old Soviet Union. At Gorky, Hayden had seen workers actually applying paint over bird crap deposited on the roofs of cars by pigeons flying around inside the plant. The Gorky comment hurt workers badly, but it also woke them up.

Hayden realized there were some good people within Jaguar willing to help turn the company around. Among them were engineers Trevor Crisp and David Szczupak, manufacturing boss Mike Beasley and stylist Geoff Lawson.

Lawson quickly developed a close friendship with William Clay Ford Sr., father of William Clay Ford Jr., Ford's current chairman. Ford, who had driven Jaguars since he was in college, acted as a protector for Jaguar in Dearborn.

"Bill Ford (senior) was an absolute brick," said Hayden.

Hayden was followed in the Jaguar chairman's job by another veteran British Ford executive, Nick Scheele, who had come up through the purchasing organization and done tours in Europe, the USA and Mexico.Scheele arrived at Jaguar in 1992, when the automotive world was in the midst of a recession that had hit Jaguar particularly hard.

"The market drop-off in the 1991-1992 period was a major hit for Jaguar," said Scheele in a 1999 interview. "Volumes dropped from 49,000 in 1988 to 20,000 in 1992. And sterling went up against the dollar. The combination was just devastating to profits. By that stage it had become clear there were some problems with XJ40 that absolutely needed fixing. We had to tackle the quality problem and had to get some costs out of the business to survive. That delayed the third program.

"In hindsight," Scheele added, "that was great because had we tried to launch a third car line as soon as the acquisition had taken place, it could not have succeeded. Those were terrible, terrible years. We started losing money at the rate of more than $1 million a day. We were losing better than 25 to 30 percent on turnover. We were losing our shirt. The real issue was, could we ever get the thing turned around?"

A couple of key events occurred. Jaguar got approval for a new engine (Jaguar's first production V-8) and for the X300, the fifth generation of the flagship XJ sedan. If the car could be engineered for quality, it could win back some of the reputation Jaguar had lost during the dark years.

"We really bet the whole company on that sedan being a home run from day one," Scheele said. "Jim Padilla [loaned by Ford to Jaguar as director of engineering and manufacturing] pored over the X300 and worked with the engineers and manufacturing guys to make sure it was designed for quality, designed for manufacture. He had driven that together with Mike Beasley and [chief engineer] Clive Ennos."

During the 1990s, Scheele presided over a period of unprecedented growth at Jaguar. What had been a boutique British carmaker now took aim at BMW and Mercedes-Benz on the global luxury stage. In 1996, Jaguar replaced the ancient XJS with the XK8. Then Jaguar used Ford resources to produce S-type, built on the same rear-wheel-drive platform as Lincoln LS. In 1998, Jaguar opened its second plant - Castle Bromwich - to build the S-type.The staff at Jaguar's Whitley Engineering Center then applied their skills to design a new small Jaguar called the X400, which became known as X-type. Ford turned its Escort plant at Halewood factory in Merseyside over to Jaguar for the new "baby Jaguar," which shared many components with the Ford Mondeo.

Just as the X-type was being launched, Ford CEO Jac Nasser made news around the world by creating Premier Automotive Group and putting ex-BMW executive Wolfgang Reitzle in charge. Included in the new group were Aston Martin, Jaguar, Lincoln and Volvo. Since then Ford added Land Rover and took Lincoln out.

As part of Premier, Jaguar set its sights on regaining the technology leadership it was famous for when the legendary E-types ruled the road in the 1960s. To emphasize that, Jaguar joined the Formula One racing circuit. Engineers at Whitley conceived the new XJ. It was launched this year, as an aluminum car with a monocoque body built borrowing techniques from the aerospace industry that had never been used in the auto industry.

The explosive growth under Ford's stewardship hasn't been entirely smooth for Jaguar, which lost $500 million in 2002 while trying to get the aluminum process right. An all-new _F-type sports car, conceived during Reitzle's tenure, was canceled. And Jaguar failed to spot the European trend toward diesel-powered cars that was sweeping Europe, losing sales to rivals such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz as a result.

But Jaguar has been completely transformed by Ford ownership. In the future there will be Jaguar station wagons and diesel-powered cars. Jaguar has moved from the bottom to near the top in quality.

After more than a decade of growing pains, Jaguar is now ready to consolidate its gains. In the end, the two companies have been right for each other. Ford had the foresight to let Jaguar be Jaguar, only a lot more so."

And another article:
https://home.autonews.com/clickshare...oreUserAgent=1

Stuart

 

Great article. Who knew an F type was being planned back in the 80s.

 

I think you misread that article. That early F-type project was scrubbed when Wolfgang Reitzle ran the Ford Premier Automotive Group, which was from 1999 to 2002. Therefore, it would appear that the first F-type project began in the mid-to-late 90's. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premie...oup#Management

I wondered how that earlier design compares to the current production F-type and did a little research. Here's what I found - a really interesting article! Can Jaguar Really kill the F-Type ? - Jaguar Clubs of North America



And for lots more pics, see: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/jaguar/...ture24760.html


Too bad they didn't build it. I like it better than the current F-Type, except for the taillights and exhaust tips. Lots of X100 and X150 design cues.

Stuart

 

Perception is reality. Jag needs to fix it perception. The F-Pace warranty is a good start.