Poll: Has your Jaguar XF with a Supercharged V6 and at least 50k miles ever had a coolant leak?

 

Why restrict this poll to the XF?
The AJ126 is identical including the coolant system pipes/tubes/hoses across all JLR vehicles.

 

I have made a few more polls in other cars’ forums.

 

I've removed the POLLS you spread across the forums.

DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN

If you want to put a post in other relevant model forums linking to the poll here, that is an acceptable method. It is also the most efficient method of combining results.

Graham

 

What might be more interesting to hear about is all those who have had "preventative" work done prior to leaks to get their original coolant pipe(s), mostly the Y pipe, replaced with the upgraded pipe, the latter only coming about after a vast amount of failures noted by Jaguar. The pipe replacement being "recommended" by Jaguar after your vehicle gets to five years. Convenient in terms of warranty of course. How Jaguar managed to avoid a mass worldwide recall I've no idea...

 

There aren’t enough poll choices in a single poll for all the models in order to delineate the results by model but okay. I don’t think anyone is voting on this poll anyways so it is a moot point.

 

I'm always dubious about the usefulness of POLLS on the forum. You put your finger on it with the limitation on number of choices and another limitation is where the pollster actually wants opinions or advice rather than simply a choice from a specific selection. (not the case here)

There's a coolant leak or component failure problem on most recent Jaguar models and reports are peppered across the forums. Low volume / high flow rate doesn't make for longevity of plastic components. JLR are clearly happy with the benefits of low original component cost provided it outlasts the warranty period. What does reputation matter nowadays.

Graham

 

Recalls only happen for safety reasons. A coolant leak usually comes with a warning and an opportunity to pull over so JLR legally isn’t responsible in most jurisdictions.

Class action lawsuit is a more likely result but I’m not sure if there are enough vehicles that suffer catastrophic failure as a result in order for the lawsuit to gain traction. JLR could also point to other car manufacturers who have cooling issues as a defense, and say that leaks are normal wear and tear maintenances. The reality of course is that Supercharged JLR vehicles have worse coolant issues than even BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche but probably not bad enough for a lawsuit. I find it interesting that people say that reliability of Jaguar has improved in the last 20 years. It’s true in the sense that the electronics aren’t complete garbage like they were in the ‘80s and ‘90s but how can anyone call a car that will leave you stranded on a highway because of several different points of failure in the cooling system as “reliable?” Ive had cooling issues on my Mustang that left me stranded but that was on a car with 160k miles! For there to be serious cooling leaks at 30-50k miles is quite jarring, even by European Luxury standards.

 

JLR will of course develop an innovate liquid cooling system for their electric vehicles as well to keep the tradition going.

 

Jaguar have had an uneasy relationship with basic electrics let alone electronic vehicle management. I wonder if it is optimism or arrogance makes the CEO (a man with some spectacular failures in his CV) believe he can buck the trend with a leap into the brave new world of EV.



The Prince may well not be vanquished but that is a topic for a different poll.

Graham

 

My 2017 XF 2L petrol engined car has not given me any grief so far. Bought 2nd hand in late 2020 at 6,000km on the clock, it still has only done 16,000km so not had much use. With a turbo engine it has plenty of poke and a V6 with S/C would just be a waste of fuel for me. The styling is reasonable for a modern car, not as distinctive as Jaguars were once renowned for. The driveability is about 8 out of 10 where it should be 10 out of 10. It labours in a high gear at times when it should downshift, and ( a bit dangerously ) at times taking off with a light throttle it will suddenly engage the turbo and give an unexpected spurt. That should easily be fixed with a software tweak, but last time I took to the dealer under 5 year warranty service he said no fixes for a 2017 but the latest XF is better in that regard. Really ! Those two relatively minor problems would not be hard to fix and I would be happy to pay $200 for an upgrade.
Hopefully low km plus a smaller engine and moderate use will keep the plastic part failures at bay.

The comment about older Jaguars having a bad reputation for electrics/electronics is to some extent an urban myth. Even people with scant knowledge of cars will tell you Jaguars have a bad reputation for reliability, especially electrics, because somebody told them so. In fact my two old V12 XJ-s are not bad at all. Believe it or not, Lucas was never as hopeless as everybody likes to believe. I have a background in many areas of engineering including electronics and still run my own small electronics manufacturing company. I know what it takes to design and make the kind of things Lucas used to make, and for the level of technology available at the time they were reasonable. A lot of it is actually repairable with OEM spares or work arounds, not bad for cars over 30 years old.
All the modern Jags will use the same electronic and electrical gear from Bosch, Denso and the others that all car manufacturers use. JLR will have some say in what they choose, but very little say in the design and quality of what they are able to choose. They do get to plan the wiring looms for what they buy in, and they can add their own software on top of what Bosch and others give them.

The biggest problem JLR have is that they manufacture in the UK. If they did that in Germany they could ride on the bandwagon of the excellent reputation of German engineering and that alone, other things being equal, would help sell 3 times as many cars. Tata take note ?
Sounds ridiculous ? Not so. Around this part of ( terrible expression ) middle class Melbourne you rarely see a modern Jaguar. It is all Mercs, BMWs, Audis - lots of them. Even a fair number of Porche and Lexus models. I know that very few buying those cars have a clue about the engineering behind a car, but they all know German is good, all their neighbors buy German, and best follow the herd. For Jaguar it is an uphill battle all the way. Even if they make a truly superlative car at a decent price, their dealers will struggle against the German products in their market segment.
Something more subtle is you see German engineering all over the world, and a lot of it in the UK. Here we see not just German cars, but a lot of expensive German household goods from fridges to kitchen knives, many of which according to consumer magazines are not good value for money yet sell easily. Look a bit further and you see German gear in factories and on building sites, tunnel boring machines, heavy lift cranes and so on. I would expect the mammoth London Crossrail tube is built with mostly German machinery. Tell me if I am wrong.
German products and brand names are everywhere. Jaguars are made in a country that has lost nearly all its iconic engineering and related manufacturing, and much of what is left is often owned by Japanese or German or US companies. A shame really, I was lucky enough to be educated to university level many years ago in the UK fully funded at taxpayers expense. I would like to see the UK do better, but somehow the urge or inclination to design and make engineering products seems to have evaporated, very few left to fly the flag.
Meanwhile in Germany, Japan and other high cost countries . . . . . well things are different.