Drove home from Ft. Worth, TX yesterday with our new car (new 2011 XK in Ebony)... what a trip. The planets really had to align for this deal to work for me, and things just kind of came together. For me to wind up with a brand new XK (11 miles on the odo.), and still stay inside the budget I set for myself 8 months or so ago, is pretty astonishing. Lots and lots of planning, researching, budgeting... and quite a bit of luck as well.

I don't have a ton of time right now and the story is really long, but in summary, man what a car. I'm just beyond impressed. Its about a 400 mile drive from where we bought the car to my house, and we enjoyed the whole trip. Huge thanks to Joe Campos at Autobahn Jaguar for taking probably 45 minutes with me and going over the car in great detail. I have been reasearching my car purchase on the internet for months, and there were still things he showed me that I wasn't aware of. He's clearly an enthusiast as well as a salesperson, and he knows the XK inside and out (interestingly, he told me the thing about locking the doors to save the battery, which is something that seems far from common knowledge).

Anyway I have to run, but wanted to say thanks to everybody who commented in my other thread.

 

Congrats on your purchase of a fabulous XK. You are looking forward to a rewarding driving and ownership experience. As expressed by so many here, often just going out to the garage, looking at the alluringly sexy lines of the XK is a reward all by itself. Then the actual drive...

Life is good, enjoy the rewards,

Albert

 

Didn't catch your other thread but congrats on the new car, wishing you many miles of smiles.

 

Cheers!

 

I have little doubt this will be the most magnificent machine you will ever own...

I know mine is for me...

Good luck!!

 

That's Great news!

I enjoyed keeping up with your quest (Seeking general opinions on my situation) and am glad you finally went with the Jag. You will not be sorry. Plus, you were able to swing a new one - excellent!

As so often seems to happen in XK shopping, you ended up buying it well before the end of your estimated time table. Once bitten, it is so hard to resist. Enjoy!

Tony

 

Bwa ha ha! You could not escape! That's awesome. Welcome to the family.

 

Hey guys, yeah my buying process / schedule definitely got altered. I was actually a bit pessimistic in my estimations about how much I would be able to save, and not optimistic enough about how far prices on new 2011s would drop as dealerships got rid of them in preparation for the 2013s arriving. I had a feeling it would happen, but not when or how much. Towards the end of Feb. I suddenly became a very popular guy as far as communicating with dealerships goes... seems places really want these cars off the books.

It was still a bit of a stretch, but as it turns out, my insurance is actually going to go DOWN (!!??). As a side note, if you haven't gotten a quote from Geico, you might think about it. I wound up getting 2 quotes because I was sure I had screwed something up the first time. That prompted me to shop around for our homeowners policy, and that is going to go down even more. After everything, my total cash outlay is going to rise about 4 or 5 dollars a month. Not bad for trading a Mazda for a Jaguar. Its still sort of hard for me to believe, but I've gone over it 100 times and everything looks right. Guess I've just been getting hosed on insurance for the last few years.

So a little story about my experience: As I'm sure many of you can probably relate to, I have been pretty much going nuts researching cars for the last 8 or 9 months or so. I've driven my wife straight to the brink talking about budgets and options and all of that stuff. Going back and forth with dealerships, trying to sell my Mazda and getting lowballed, the timing involved with these new 2011s, all that stuff I'm sure I don't need to explain the stresses those experiences cause because everybody has been there at one point or another.

Heres a summary of the last couple days:
So we decide to rent a car and head down to texas on Friday, we'll drive the new car home Saturday. Pick up the rental (Nissan Altima), bring my wife's car to a public parking lot to leave overnight, I get in the rental. Rental car sounds... bad. We finally get to the highway and the damn thing is so out of balance its not driveable over 70 mph. Call Hertz. They dont have another car but they have one at the Hertz at our local airport. So we drive all the way back through town to go get a different car. Which turns out to be a Nissan Cube. No offense to any Cube owners that may be reading, but god. Not my favorite car. Drive to Plano, TX, stopping once for gas. Now half deaf from wind noise, we order dinner curbside and take it to the hotel (its now about 9PM).

So we're up in the hotel room with dinner and drinks, and everything starts to finally melt away. This is really going to happen, and we're finally done. My wife and I are eating and drinking and laughing... having a great time. Now its about 11:30, we decide to turn in. I go to change out of my jeans, and.... no wallet.

I should be clear, I am not a lose-your-wallet kind of guy. I've never lost, misplaced, or left the house without it in my whole life. The jeans I'm wearing have dropped the wallet out of my pocket onto a car seat before... maybe once or twice (Of course I've been in 3 different cars that day, 2 of which are 5 hours away). Additionally, all the loan stuff is in my name, so this deal is not getting done without my license. We tear apart the room, nothing. We go check the Cube, nothing. Check room again. Check Cube again. I'm positive I had it when we left, and very sure I had it when we were driving before we got gas, as we went through a toll booth and I remember thinking "am I going to get this or does my wife have cash out already". If I had that thought I would have checked my wallet... so I'm pretty sure. We call the gas station we stopped at, nothing turned in. Stress level has now gone from 10, to 0, and now back to 11.

I sleep about an hour and get back up. Call the gas station again, still nothing. At this point I'm trying to come up with a plan for maybe putting a large downpayment down, going home, and flying back during the week. Who knows. We get our stuff, check out of the hotel, go to the Cube. Open the door, and theres my wallet wedged between the outside of the passenger seat and the floor. In the dark and in our panic, we just missed it... in the morning light its just sitting right there, obvious to all. Jubilation ensues. 7:30 AM outside the hotel, there are a few people milling around the parking lot. I run past them with my wallet in the air, stop, and spike my wallet like a football. Nobody in Texas has a sense of humor I guess, but my wife got a kick out of it.

And so that was the crazy end to a crazy story. So many things that almost went totally wrong just didn't, and I got lucky I guess.

 

Wow, great story with a happy ending.
You must have spent a miserable night thinking the wallet was lost.

Have fun with that new car!

 

When I purchased my XK last year, I had it shipped from the dealer in Maryland to my home in South Carolina.

The car was 12 hours late getting to me. I finally took it off the tractor trailer at 1:30 in the morning, in the middle of a torrential rain storm. The 18 wheeler delivering the XK would not fit on my road, so the driver parked in a supermarket parking lot about three miles from my house and called me from his cell phone.

When got there, it was raining so hard, you could not see the trailer even with the lights on. The driver wanted me to walk around the car in the pouring rain, in the middle of the night, to certify he had not damaged the car in transport (you gotta be kidding)

I finally got into the cockpit to drive home my new dream car and immediately discovered the heater/AC/defogger was not working.

So there I was, driving home, all the windows fogged, freezing my A-- off, drenched, and having to repeatedly wipe the inside of the windshield with my sleeve to be able to see out the fogged windows. I finally just rolled down the driver's side glass and hung my head out like the family dog, getting even more soaked, while reminding myself, I just wrote a $40,000.00 check just to experience all this...

I got the car home, into the garage, and proceeded to spend the next two days detailing an unbelievably filthy car. Luckily, the was no major damage to speak of. Some light scratches in the back bumper. Oh, I had to carefully polish three years worth of swirl marks out of the paint (I don't think the original owner ever hand washed the thing). Additionally, it seems the driver of the car carrier must have had black grease all over his hands when he drove the car off the truck, because I spent three hours shampooing black greasy fingerprints off the headliner, sun visors, windshield surround, etc.

I have owned the car a year now and the bad memories have pretty much faded. The HVAC and a few other issues were repaired under factory warranty. The car ultimately cleaned up very nicely, and other than usual Jaguar electrical gremlins, since resolved, My XK ownership experience has been absolutely first class.

I love this car, truly. Even after all I went through, I have no desire to own anything else...If heaven forbid I totaled it tomorow, I would buy another just like it (other then next time I believe will drive it home myself).

 

Happy safe driving, nice story
You also picked up a nice color

 

Congrats!
I have a question, but I'll send via a pm.

 

Stillwaters... boy, the rain I don't know. That must have been horrifying. You're right though, once its done its all worth it.

Drove it to work today (I work from home 3 days a week, usually). What a blast. Passing people is such a joy. Clicking down a gear or two with the left paddle and just howling by someone is unbelievably addictive. Going to be a challenge to stay out of trouble...

 

Enjoy your new light cycle! Good story too. Glad it all worked out.