"Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen" (distraxi)
07/26/2014 at 11:07 • Filed to: REVIEW
11
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"Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen" (distraxi)
07/26/2014 at 11:07 • Filed to: REVIEW | 11
| 4 |
As I mentioned a week or two back, my Jag !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! after 2 years and 40,000km in my hands. No fault of its - I just have a surplus of cars and a deficit of time, money, and wifely tolerance. So, in memorial of one of the more enjoyable - if at times frustrating - cars I’ve owned, I offer you: the Oppositelock review.
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(Disclosure: Jaguar wanted me to drive this car so badly they disguised it as the Miata I thought I was shopping for. This was an impressive trick, given that BMW had tried the same thing a couple of weeks previously with an E36 M3 but I’d seen through their nefarious scheme).
My wife refers to this car as “the thug in the sharp suit”. And she’s not wrong: it’s the most schizophrenic car I’ve ever owned. It’s elegant, comfortable, and restrained, but the impression of a civilized gentleman’s carriage never quite comes off. There’s always a hint, from the slight jiggling of the big low profile tyres and the whirring of the supercharger belt, that it’s just itching to smash somebody’s face in. And it will, given half a chance. Personally, I like that about it, but I guess it depends whether your taste in Bond runs to Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan.
The X308 series XJ’s came out in 1998. They were based on the previous X300 series (which were in turn based on the 1980s vintage XJ40 platfform), but with new interior, heavily reworked suspension, and an all-new V8 motor: the AJV8 series, which is still in use today. The XJR derivative came with a supercharged 4.0 litre version of this engine, good for 370hp. It was Jaguar’s second attempt at a supercharged car, and their first serious try at the supersaloon category. Although comparable performance wise with contemporary German competitors such as the M5 and E55, it was somewhat larger and softer than either, probably half way between those and a 7 series or S class.
Exterior: 9/10
By my scoring, 10/10 in this category comes only in 50s & 60s European exotica, or on a DB9 platform. However for modern era (i.e. post 70s) saloons, the X308 XJ is about as good as it gets. One of the great pleasures of owning this car has been walking up to it.
The styling is unashamedly old school, but without descending into the pastiche retro of the S type or X350. The mild curves and slim pillars give a delicacy missing in most current cars, or even those of its vintage. And the proportions are exaggeratedly long and low-slung. Despite being substantially lower than virtually any other saloon, it’s an easy car to find in the supermarket car park, because the tail will be sticking out about 2 feet past anybody else.
I also like the subtlety of the “R” version’s performance message. There are no wings or airdams, no loud graphics or aggressive flares. Just deletion of some of the XJ8's (to my eye excessive) chrome, a mesh grille, a discreet, dark coloured logo on the back, and 18" wheels filled with seriously huge crossdrilled discs, to show you it means business. In the black-on-black colour scheme, it exudes an air of restrained, cultured, evil. Jaguar has recently been pushing the “good to be bad” theme - this car has it in spades. There’s a reason why they put Hannibal Lecter in a black XJR.
Probably the only area I’d mark it down is stance. Even on the sports suspension, the gap above the wheels is too large, and there’s too much ground clearance. Made worse by exposed jackpoints hanging down below the rockers. Side skirts would subtract from the subtlety of the design, but if it wouldn’t ruin the ride I’d be sorely tempted to lower it another inch or so. Oh, and the “V8" badge on the B pillar is tacky.
Interior: 8/10
I don’t think there’s a universal scoring measure for interiors - tastes vary so wildly. Mine tends to gentleman’s club luxury, and the Jag delivers on that perfectly. Nobody does wood and leather like the Brits, and the XJR’s interior is a very pleasant space to spend your day. My Jag had the dark stained wood trim option, which works well with the black leather, though all that black feels a bit Audi at times. The elliptical “spitfire wing” dash and trim panels complement the exterior curves nicely, and the deeply recessed individual instruments suit the old-school vibe perfectly. The perforated leather sports seats are supportive without being too restrictive, and hold up well to a long day’s driving. Visibility’s pretty good due to the slim pillars and square corners, though the upright screen gives a “pillbox” feeling to the view out the front.
You sit very low for a saloon, which can make getting in and out a PITA, but which enhances the sporting feel. Headroom is plenty adequate for a 6 footer, though this car didn’t have a sunroof. With one, taller folks may have a problem.
Downsides are the 90s “wall of buttons” centre console, lack of a cupholder on non-US models, and the fact that for a car longer than many modern garages, it has truly pathetic packaging. There’s not much legroom in the back, the drivers and passengers footwells are narrow, and the boot is shallow: my MkV Golf has a more capacious interior. This isn’t a car to take 4 of your friends on holiday. Treat it as a really generous 2+2 though, and it’s just about perfect.
Acceleration: 9/10
Back when they first came out, this was one seriously quick car: one of the fastest saloons money could buy, and right up there with contemporary Corvettes and 911s. Since the horsepower wars of the last decade, however, expectations have moved on: the fastest saloons are doing 0-60 in the 3s nowadays. So the 5 second 0-60 of an XJR is fast but not spectacular, by new car standards. By the standards of sub-$10k cars though, it’s still one of the great performance bargains.
The power delivery, as you might expect, is dominated by the supercharger. This is my first supercharged car, and I’d heard that one of the benefits is they are very linear. That’s not the case here: it feels just like a turbo car, but with zero lag. There’s not a huge amount of go at low revs, but around 2500-3000 rpm it starts to get its Lou Ferrigno on, serving up a massive lump of torque which falls away towards max rpm as the single-screw Eaton starts to strangle itself. Adding to the the Jekyll and Hyde impression, the throttle travel is long and most of the action happens in the last few inches.
In practice what that means is that you’re either in a hurry, or you’re not. If you’re not, you waft. If you are, the plebs better step aside: the midrange go is way stronger than the 370 hp would suggest. Keep it in the 3000-5000 rpm band, and you can eat most other things for breakfast. And if you’re in even more of a hurry, a couple of pulleys and a bit of attention to the induction offer some of the most cost-effective power upgrades in town. I didn’t go that route; “fast enough for any passing manouevre I’m brave enough to try” is enough for me, and this car will easily get you to license-risking speeds while overtaking.
Braking: 6/10
My car was fitted with the “R1" performance pack, which consists of 18" BBS split-rims, larger diameter vented/drilled Brembo rotors, 4 pot calipers and stainless brake hoses. They look great, pedal feel is great, and they stop great: you need to really work to get the ABS to activate. I’ve never felt a hint of fade, though admittedly I’m not normally a late braker. The car’s actually ridiculously over-braked for road use, unless you happen to have an Alpine pass handy.
I’d be giving it 10/10 for brakes, except for one massive defect: they’re hopelessly prone to judder. Apparently there’s a flaw in the hub design which causes them to wear unevenly unless wheel, hub, and rotor are all perfectly true. I’ve been through 2 sets of front rotors in 2 years, not because I wear them out, but because they need skimming every 3 months or so. And OEM rotors are insanely expensive - like in $1000 a corner expensive. Fortunately there are cheap aftermarket alternatives, which don’t seem to judder any worse than the genuine Brembos.
Overall, next time I’d be going for a car with the standard brakes, not the R1 spec.
Ride: 9/10
In my book, you don’t get 10/10 for ride unless you have 2 chevrons on the front and hydropneumatic spheres under the bonnet. While not up to Citroen’s magic carpet standards, big Jags (pre the current generation, at least) have always had a superb ride, and this one’s no exception. Although the springs and sway bars are stiffer than an XJ8, the adaptive dampers mean you don’t pay much of a ride penalty for halfway decent handling. Which is more than you can say for its contemporaries - the closest competitor vehicles I’ve driven are an E38 740i and a W210 E55, and neither of them are in the same game ride-wise.
It’s not as good as my ‘85 S3 XJ6 was - the 255/40 profile tyres let through high frequency disturbances that the older car’s 205/60s would have just ironed out. But I’m always surprised, when hopping out of the XJR and into anything else, to rediscover bumps in my local roads that I’d forgotten existed.
Handling: 8/10
This really isn’t a car that encourages 10/10ths driving. Although grip is excellent, it’s not really a full-on corner carver in the M5 mould, much less the Miata mould. You can chuck it around with some confidence, but it takes a while to settle into corners, body roll is significant and you’re never in any doubt that you’re driving a lot of car. And it’s not big on being told exactly what to do: try to place it to the inch and you’ll be fidgeting at the wheel constantly. It’s also hampered by the combination of an open diff and first-generation (and therefore unsubtle) stability control. The choice is leave the ESC on and have nanny take your fun away, or turn it off and rip shreds out of your inside rear wheel. I suspect it’d be no fun at all at a track day, although there’s Youtube video out there showing that they’re capable of pretty respectable lap times.
Having said all that, back off a little, and work with it instead of ordering it around, and it becomes a different car - spotting the recurring theme here? Let it find its own path, stay smooth on the inputs, and it’s stable, composed, and happy to be moved around on the throttle. At a public-road-sensible 8/10ths - which is still plenty darn quick in a car of this capability - it’s a lot of fun to hustle: much more so than its cruising or 10/10ths behaviour suggest. And the ride quality and long suspension travel means it really comes into its own when the road surface isn’t too hot - useful here in New Zealand, where a lot of our best back roads suffer from tree roots and ground movement. You can press on a lot harder knowing that unexpected bumps or waves won’t throw it off its stride. I’ve left behind much more sporty cars, purely because they’ve had to back off due to road conditions.
Gearbox: 7/10
Although I’m not a huge slushbox fan, there’s no question that auto is the right transmission for a luxobarge. All I ask of an auto is that I don’t have to notice it. If it’s always in the right gear and I’m never aware of it getting there, that’s 10/10. I haven’t yet met an auto that manages that 100% of the time, though VW’s DSG box comes pretty close once you’re past parking-lot speeds.
The ex-Mercedes 5 speed in the XJR achieves one out of two of those objectives. When properly calibrated, its shifts are perfectly smooth. You’ll occasionally notice it dropping from 2nd to 1st, but that’s it. It is, however, prone to lose its calibration when the battery gets disconnected.
Where it’s not so good, however, is the “right gear, right time” thing. “Normal” mode is clearly programmed for maximum fuel economy - it starts in second, heads straight for the highest gear it can manage, and is very reluctant to kick down except at full throttle. Great for relaxed idling round town, not so hot for a quick surge into a gap on the freeway. It’s better in “Sport” mode, but even then it likes to see your foot a long way down before it’ll grant you a lower gear. Though at least once it’s decided to drop down, it’s happy to stay there for a while, keeping you on the boil through a twisty section.
The saving grace is that the J gate makes for easy manual shifting, and when you’re in a mood to enjoy yourself, sticking it in third and forgetting about it is a perfect approach: the torque means that as long as you have a few revs on there’s no need to row the box. And the other advantage of the Merc box is that, unlike the ZF used in the XJ8, it’s bombproof: it’s used in all manner of hot AMGs, and is a favourite of the drag community.
Toys: 7/10
As you’d expect from a top of the line luxury car, it has pretty much everything that was available in 2001: traction and stability control, cruise control, auto lights, wipers and mirror dimming, memory seats, reversing sensors, and a (now very retro) wired-in carphone in the centre console. Against its contemporaries, it’d be a 9/10 (I’m sure the S class had more toys).
Problem is, time has moved on, and features have moved on too. What was top of the line in 2001 was pretty much standard 5 years later: my Golf has most of that lot, too. And being state of the art at the time, a lot of that tech doesn’t actually work too well. As mentioned above, the stability control has only two states - asleep, or sending you off to bed with no supper. And it’s prone to leap into the latter mode at minor provocations like driveway lips or bridge expansion joints. And the rain sensing wipers are pretty good at noticing they need to go to intermittent, but not too good at realising a light shower has now turned to a downpour.
Audio: 7/10
The engine-generated part of the audio experience shows, once again, the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the car. Keep it off boost and it’s quiet and nondescript: little to no exhaust noise, just the usual range of modern-car whirs and moans from under the hood. It’s better from outside, where there’s a hint of V8 burble, but it’s all disappointingly discreet - some owners rip out the centre silencer and stick in an X or H pipe for a bit more rumble. Wind noise is pretty good too. Cruising, even at freeway speeds, is mostly dominated by tyre roar - my car has Bridgestone RE002s on it, which I wouldn’t choose again.
Give it the boot though, and, once again, everything changes. The moment the supercharger bypass valve closes, the Industrial Revolution kicks off under the hood. Serious acceleration is accompanied by a loud mechanical whine which I find hard to describe, but which leaves you in no doubt that a big heavy belt drive is pouring lots of power into spinning a big metal pump. I’ve never quite decided whether I actually like it, but it certainly gives a sense of occasion. It’s something they seem to have quietened down in later supercharged models.
The other part of the audio experience is of course the stereo. Which is a real blast from the past. There’s no Bluetooth, USB, or Aux-in, and it seems a bit strange nowadays to have your choice of music restricted to the 6 CDs you can stick in the changer in the boot. There’s this weird rectangular slot into which you’re supposed to stick some sort of tape thingy - can you even buy cassettes any more? And turning the stereo on is accompanied by the clonking of an actual chrome telescopic radio mast climbing out of the back - how archaic is that?
Fortunately you can still buy cassette-to-headphone-jack converter contraptions, so music from the iPhone can be accessed after a fashion. And once you get over being stuck in the 90s, the sounds from the stereo are actually excellent: the R models got an uprated sound system with an amp in the spare wheel well and extra tweeters and a sub dotted around. It even turns out that having an NSA sized antenna looming in your rear view results in superb radio reception.
Value: 7/10
Given the performance and luxury, these things are ridiculously cheap to buy. You can buy excellent ones all day long for well under $10k in the US, and in New Zealand they’re priced against similar aged V8 Commodores or Falcons. Which, for all the reverence with which Aussie muscle is held on this site, is a joke: the early 2000s was still malaise era in Australia. So 10/10, if not 11/10, for purchase price.
Against that, as with all older exotica, the purchase price is only the down payment. My impression - based on a couple of Jags myself and more in the family, and a collection of friends and colleagues in older German and Japanese machinery - is that the difference between Jag ownership and that of some other cars is that a Jag will bleed you dry steadily, while the Germans and Japanese will lull you into a false sense of security before bankrupting you in one shot.
While Jaguar reliability in the Ford era was nowhere near as bad as its reputation, I’ve had a steady stream of minor things needing fixing. In two years I’ve replaced water pump, alternator, MAF sensor, plugs, lower ball joints, front sway bar and shock bushes, supercharger belt, 2 radio masts, a door mirror actuator and a door lock actuator. As well as a set of tyres and the above-mentioned two sets of front rotors. However a lot of that is routine maintenance - the car passed the magic 100k mile mark in my ownership, and is at an age where bushes etc are reaching end of life. Only one issue (the alternator) has actually stranded me, and parts aren’t hideously expensive once you find out the non-dealer parts sources and what the Ford equivalent parts are. Plus the low residuals mean there’s plenty of junked cars, so good availability of used parts. There’s also a very helpful and well informed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and parts diagrams and dealer workshop manuals are available online. If you don’t mind doing some of your own work, it’s all fairly painless. God help you if you’re reliant on a dealership, though.
Then of course there’s gas. Which is bad, though not as bad as I’d expected. I get around 13l/100km (18 US mpg) overall, though it’ll do 10.8 l/100km (22 mpg) on a run, or worse than 15 l/100km (16 mpg) in town. Still cheaper than depreciation on something modern though - man-math FTW!
Overall, even including maintenance, I’ve found it a pretty affordable venture into luxury car ownership. Frustrating at times, and certainly labour intensive, but not actually that expensive. So I’m only going to knock 3 off the value category. Which I expect will result in people wheeling out all the old cliches, but all I can say is that neither of my Jags have been as bad as the one Toyota I’ve owned.
Yes, if you live in the US you could get something American with an LS in it that would give you the same straight-line performance with much less grief. But then you’d have to look at it, and sit in it. And honestly: would you want to do a 10 hour backroad drive in one? Because in the Jag, you would. I’ve repeatedly chosen to drive this car that distance over two-lane roads rather than fly, just for the pleasure of it.
And that is the XJR’s niche. It’s not a sports saloon. It’s not an autobahnsturmer. It’s not a muscle car. It’s not a family hauler, a city car, nor a limo. What it is, is a GT car. In the original sense of GT: a car for doing the Grand Tour. For taking a few people and a healthy chunk of luggage on a long fast cruise over interesting roads, and delivering them fresh, relaxed, and in style. And for that, it’s bloody sublime.
Manuél Ferrari
> Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
07/26/2014 at 12:00 |
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Wow this is a really informative and funny review about a car I knew nothing about but always wanted to learn about.
Thanks!!!
Have car, will drive (now has a motorcycle too)
> Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
07/26/2014 at 18:48 |
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Great review! I really like the X300/X308, and have come close to owning one a couple of times in the last few years. In the end my rational side talks me out of it out of fear of maintenance costs. It is good to hear an owner's experiences, though the significant number of maintenance items you mentioned only confirm my rational side's fears.
Also, great to see another Oppo from RHD land! (Albeit the other side of the Tasman from my part of RHD land). I get a warm feeling every time I see a RHD car on Oppo (is that weird!?). I will have to do an Oppo review of my car soon to increase the presence of RHD on Oppo!
ChokingKojak
> Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
09/11/2015 at 12:32 |
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Excellent review. It’s freaking late 2015, and I still think the X308 XJR (2001-2003) has some of the best lines on a sedan I’ve ever seen. And fairly decent reliability with the early X308 bugs worked out, the AMG tranny and Ford parts.
I’d replace the radio receiver with something modern, probably change the fluids all around — particularly the tranny. Then I’d change intake and pulleys and hold tight as I got gradually bleed-out on the repair issues you mentioned. But I can’t think of another sedan that looks better to me, so I’d take the hit.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jaguar — now owned by the Indians — probably starts producing a model that adopts the look of the classic X308s starting in the early 2020s; it’ll probably be updated as a hybrid or plug-in hybrid V6 with auto-start-top — something like that, my guess
davoid64
> Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
02/03/2017 at 11:42 |
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This great review convinced me to get a Daimler Super V8. Is that like the best car name ever?