I’d always fancied owning a Jaaaag. I was getting older, I was now a manager, my Mazda6 daily was about to expire expensively and so I wandered over to Autotrader….
There I found a 6 year old black XF with a 5 litre V8 going for £20k. It called to me. With the Stupid Car and my wife’s Kia Picanto it would bring the average number of cyliners per car in the family to 6.66, which amused me. It was quick, it could heft it’s 2 tonnes to 60 in 5.2 seconds, which was quicker than the Lotus Elise I used to own. So off I go to Sevenoaks and I bought it.
And all was good.
Until it wasn’t.
The major problem was an intermittent ECU fault code (P1601 I think) that would light up the CEL every couple of weeks. It was in and out of the dealership as they tried to trace the problem. They found that on one occasion it triggered as the barometric pressure sensor claimed the car was at somewhere above where Concorde used to fly and the ECU will need replacing, along with the security coded keys. That’ll be £3000 please. It didn’t fix the problem.
Another time, I came out of the house to find the windscreen had stress cracks from the bottom up. £1000 to replace (fortunately covered by insurance).
It failed an MOT on a crack in a wheel, £600 please.
To keep the bonnet clean and stylish, the washer jets were built into the wiper arms so the water would spray and be immediately wiped. Nice idea until it gets cold and the engine heat can’t keep the jets free of ice. I discovered that one on the motorway and had to buy some bottled water at services to clear the screen of grime.
I got to know the courtesy cars very well, I drove them all and they were generally XE models of various trims. I started to think about downsizing a bit and the XE was reasonable.
Then my phone popped up an article comparing the XE to the Kia Stinger. I’d never heard of it before and I was intrigued. £40k got a car with a huge amount of kit as standard. It made the XF look poverty-spec. It was also quick, very quick. 0-60 was 4.8 seconds, which is quite silly. This car in terms of performance was virtually identical to the Lotus Carlton of years gone by.
So I took myself to the Jaaaag website I set about seeing how much it would cost to spec an XE with the same kit and performance as the Kia. I gave up not achieving it when I breached £60k. I’ve never been a badge snob, and over £20k to drive ’not a Kia’ seemed very silly.
So Jan 2018, I got this
And very nice it is too.
A few weeks after I got it, I got a call from the service department at the local Jaaaag dealership. They were wondering how I was getting on with their last attempt to fix the car. I explained that I no longer had it and now had the Stinger. Mine was one of the first in the country so they asked if I wouldn’t mind popping over so they could see it. As they were on my way home from work I said I would.
I pulled up and they came out to look. They ooh’ed and ahh’ed over the obvious things (like the head up display) and were generally very appreciative. However one of them said
“It’s not very clean is it?”
“Beacuse it isn’t at the dealership getting fixed every 2 weeks” I responded.