2010 Jaguar XF Review

Cars.com experts walk you through the 2010 Jaguar XF and its important new features.

2010 Jaguar XF Review Hi! I’m Kelsey Mays for cars.com. With me, the 2010 Jaguar XF. This car came out last year to succeed the S-type, probably a car that stuck around for too many years. Our videos of the 2009 model concentrate on the interior and certain technological elements. This year’s car gets a bigger V8, so we’re going to talk about what it’s like to drive. Our test car has a new 5L V8. Last year’s 4.2L V8 serves as the base engine, a 5L obviously optional. There is also a supercharged 5L available. When you get in a luxury car, you expect effortless passing power. The 4.2 delivered that most of the time. Sometimes, it did feel a bit more like a V6 than a V8. No such problems with the 5L, passing power is effortless, the transmission does not have to shift, gears is much definitely a burlier exhaust, just a lot of fun to drive, generally speaking. Gas mileage, the car’s EPA rated 16 miles per down city 23 highway. That’s competitive in this segment although, we were getting something like 17, 18 miles per gallon and mostly highway driving over the weekend, not so great. It’s also a pretty good balance between ride, comfort and handling. In less expensive cars, you often have to sacrifice the one from the other. Not the case here, supercharged XFs do have an available adaptive suspension but even the non-adaptive sort of base setup in our test car delivers pretty good handling, keeps body rolling check and keeps you comfortable over rough roads. Road noise on the highway is pretty low but we did notice a bit of wind noise overhead. We’ve also noted that the brake pedal is kind of crabby, a little bit difficult to iron out smooth stops even after you get the hang of it. But overall, the XF delivers what we’d expect for a $50,000.00, $60,000.00 luxury car. It’s capable. It’s quiet. It’s well appointed on the inside but you’ll want to know a good mechanic. Consumer report surveys for the first year peg the excess reliability as worst among luxury cars. Another study at Jaguar on the upswing for reliability as it’s historically been a brand that hasn’t done so well there. Unfortunately, it does not seem like the XF really improves on this. For more car related news, go to cars.com or our blog KickingTires.net.