New Car

Hello All.

Sorry I haven’t posted in quite a while, I’ve had quite alot on, with revision, exams, leaving school and such.

My uncle’s 3.0 Sovereign X-Type is 3 years old on June 23rd. It’s a manual, and my uncle is having leg trouble, due to nerve damage from breaking his back a few years ago, so is looking for an automatic. We have decided the best car to go for would be a Jaguar XF, as we are both head over heels in love with it, and we’ve been thinking about the best model to go for. We don’t really want to buy new again, so that rules out the new 3.0 V6 Diesel, so, we had a look at top spec Premium Luxury 2.7D models. After looking at the pro’s and con’s, we’ve decided it might not be for us, it’s a fantastic engine by all means, but will be significantly slower than our current car, diesel, and although the claimed Mpg is a whopping 38, most people struggle to get any more than 29-30.

Going by our previous decision, this also rules out the 3.0 V6 petrol, as this is 0.2 seconds slower again to 60 than the diesel model and has a book Mpg of 26.2. (Why anyone would choose this over a diesel totally puzzles me! Worse Mpg and worse performance!)

We both reckon the 416Bhp Supercharged 4.2 “SV8″ model would be the best to go for, as this has the most kit as standard (And if you are spending that much new in the first place, you are bound to go the whole hog and spec it fully.) and has depreciated the most. Example: Two new XF’s, a year ago, one a Premium Luxury 2.7d, the other a SV8, both fully specced-up. (The SV8 would still have more kit, as it has some options that are unavailble on lesser engines.) The book price of the diesel would have been c.£45,000, and the SV8 c.£60,000, even though the SV8 carries such a premium new, both cars a year on and with around 15,000 miles on them, would be worth about the same! (c.£33-35,000).

We don’t do many miles, so the fuel economy doesn’t matter unduly, although it is good for such a massive V8, returning around 20Mpg in the real world. (Less if you use the loud pedal excessively!)

So instead of diesel clatter, 207Bhp, 0-60 in 7.7 seconds and 144mph, we’ll have V8 Growl, 416Bhp, 0-60 in 5.4 seconds and a car that’s collared to 155.

Wow.

So my uncle might be buying the car of my dreams after all.

Hasn’t quite sunk in yet, as he was the one who came out with “I might as well go with the big V8.”

Absolutely awesome!