2009 Jaguar XF Supercharged

Months in service: Nine
Miles to date: 22,720

If you've been reading our regular updates on our Four Seasons Jaguar XF Supercharged, you'll know that it's been beset by a series of problems--most of them minor, but some a little more troubling--that have managed to detract from its very fine driving dynamics.

The XF is now on the East Coast, having been delivered in mid-April to our New York correspondents, Joe Lorio and Jamie Kitman, by executive editor Joe DeMatio. DeMatio filed this report from his drive to Gotham:

"The morning we departed, Ann Arbor got about three inches of snow, but the roads were pretty much clear. There was still plenty of precipitation, though; rain mixed with wet snow. This slushy snow built up on the sensor for the radar cruise control, rendering it inoperative. We stopped three or four times to clean off the sensor, which is a black plastic rectangular panel on the right-hand side of the lower center air intake. Sometimes the cruise would then work for five or ten minutes before an alarm sounded, alerting us that the sensor was again blocked.

"We read and re-read every word of the owners manual on the subject of cruise control: our goal was to simply use REGULAR cruise control, without the radar, but we were unable to get regular cruise to work. This was quite annoying, because it's hard to keep this car at only 74 mph in the 65-mph zones of Ohio and Pennsylvania without cruise.

"Once we got farther into Pennsylvania, thankfully the roads dried up, and the radar cruise worked fine. Still, we never figured out how to use regular cruise. By dusk, we were in the most entertaining sections of I-80, where it carves through some fairly major mountain ranges, and the Jaguar XF Supercharged was a blast. I threw caution to the wind for a while and did 80 to 90 mph, which is, of course, effortless in this car. As unhappy and frustrated as I had been with this car in the early afternoon, I was equally thrilled with it once I was hammering along I-80 at speeds between 80 and 120 mph (very briefly; I was't THAT incautious). So, anyway, we detected absolutely no sign of the vibrations that have afflicted this car since last fall, so I think the Jaguar dealer was right: they must have been caused by the snow tires. The XF was completely smooth and quiet."