Owners' Stories

I bought this car used with around 40K miles on it - so I was the second owner. I really loved this car, it’s sleek, fast, comfortable, and you feel like the Queen of England when you drive down the road in it (mine was emerald green – the color of money ;-)). The real problem is that you love the car so much you don’t know when to get rid of it – I thought I would keep it until it was an antique because they don’t make this body style anymore and it is so beautiful. When I got the car I had an extended warranty on the car to 90K miles – it was covered bumper to bumper. As I approached the 90K miles I kept getting notices to extend my warranty, but the car ran so great I was like “what in the world could possibly go wrong?” Needless to say, I did not renew the warranty and right as the car clicked to 100K miles, it was like a red flag went up and said – “okay, it’s time to break down.” The first thing to go was the transmission, the dealer wanted to charge me 10K to replace it, so I looked for another mechanic who charged me $5,500 and the car still looked great but it never ran the same. I now felt like Miss Daisy, the car had NO pickup. Not sure if this would have been different had I used the Jag dealer… two months later I had some belt go out and it cost me $2,500 – but at this point I found a really good Jag mechanic… within a year after the transmission went out I had spent over 10K on fixing things in that car and it finally ran great again – but still slower due to that transmission. But I was happy, and then a couple of years ago, one night I was driving down the George Washington Parkway and it was raining and there was a tree that had broken and fallen on the road, I swerved to miss it, lost control of the car, and ended up going into the forest towards the Potomac River, hit 3 or 4 trees head on, and finally a 4 foot boulder stopped the car. Needless to say, that was the end of that car – but I walked away from that accident with just a few bruises. I still miss that car, and I question if I would have survived that crash in another car. But I doubt I will ever buy that car again. So, my biggest recommendation for this car is 1) get the extended warranty if you can, 2) once the warranty expires (or sooner), get a really good Jag mechanic (not the dealer, they are too expensive), 3) don’t buy the car if you can’t afford to fix it all the time – even with a good mechanic, it is still costly, and 4) don’t fall in love with a car.

This car is 16 years old and we are the second owners. We have replaced outer door handles for less than $40.00 and the headliner was $250.00. Recently replaced the fuel pump with filter and that was less than $125.00. It is a good ride. Comfortable ride and we just love it.. Dee Dee