Gadgetory

well used to be you knew what an XJ looks like an elegantly balanced sedan with lots of wood veneer Connolly hides and even little funny picnic tables but while the new XJ has most of that you'll be too busy asking mats and XJ to notice let's drive the 2011 Super Sport and check the tap the new XJ has the new Jaguar face of course four doors still but a sloping coupe like rear aspect they call this eggplant II color caviar and it blends rather sneakily into the always black c-pillar garnish part of designer Ian Callum's controversial new take on the hindquarters and speaking of hindquarters our XJ moves it's very decisively because it's the Super Sport the top of the stack for performance but we'll get to that here's where we begin our first round of the game hit or miss first thing you see when you get in this jag is virtual instrumentation on the center stack you've got the latest edition of Jaguars effort to try and make things very virtual reduce the number of buttons but not have so much damn animation going back and forth blessedly now you can turn off needless animation that used to kill all kinds of valuable seconds while you are interacting with it but the system is still slow then they've got needless burying that makes me nuts to get to the seat heaters there are no simple buttons you've got to first enable the seat heater mode wait then go to the virtual buttons for the seat heater wait for them to take effect and you've got seat zones for bottom and back and top and that's all real nice but again slow is the key word here if I have media on the screen and I go to adjust the temperature it takes a second for it to react and even worse it pulls a pop-up menu up there and that takes a while for that to go away because it doesn't know when I'm done looking at it it's an interference I just don't need that said this is a really well-designed overall system in terms of how it's bringing a lot of technology to bear in one place you've got just about everything you want in terms of the media system you've got radio in this car being am/fm and HD radio Sat radio is serious on a Jaguar my music brings up all your different sources and there are quite a few here you've got a single slot CD right here rip that to the hard drive 30 gigabytes you've got your iPod hooked up interestingly with dual USB jacks one for iPod another one for USB thumb drives or so they're labeled now here's my droid hooked up as a music player because it has a 2 DP stereo bluetooth on this guy the navigation system is one of the better looking out there they've done a really good job of rendering Rhodes the typeface is on the streets things of that nature are looking really good at this point I like this about the knavish you get closer to an event something you've got to turn or make sure in the right lane it takes over the leftmost virtual gauge the fuel and temperature and your music settings and all that relatively low-grade stuff and put some momentary very James Bond Goldfinger Aston Martin ish little window in there that tells you your next event and then when you do that it takes that away you go back to your gauge it's cool now on the instrument panel hit-and-miss I think it's really cool that it's virtual it allows it to prioritize things that matter at the moment but that's the hit the miss is those gauges look like a graphic novel and I'm being generous they look cartoony to be honest and they don't fit the quality of the caliber and the price of this car I don't think and that needs to be stepped up a little in terms of elegance lots of ways to keep you from backing into things with this car so when you go into reverse you've got a backup camera which gives you trajectory and gives you distance markings and on top of that you've also got sensors front and rear to make sure you don't drive into things the shifter by the way is this little pop-up deal Jags been using for a while Park reverse neutral Drive and sport mode is right there with an additional push and turn detent I love this check out the jet nozzles here for the climate control system first of all you've got a rotator here for open or closed very elegant nicely integrated and then the gimbals they sit on are fabulous silky but nice and stiff they'll stay exactly where you put them infinite movement and they're not grinding some other economics in this car that are interesting Jaguar has a thing called Jags sense let's see it's here in the glove box this looks like a button but you just lay some skin on it you get a little bit of contact and down comes the glove box okay same thing goes on up here for these dome lights you don't push anything you just make contact with them and the lights come on great little touch in case you didn't notice here and in here that's a saucy color a purple they're lighting this thing with this is kind of a biggest Jaguar but not in the second row it's not good god I yeah I can't ride in the back Oh got a nice climate system back here while you're driving around with your legs in your chin now you can also get up rear seat entertainment media system back here where you get dual eight inch screens buried in the headrest a really cool media controller that would be inside the armrest here without that we have just whoo lots of that great purple fuzz and luckily more of these nice silky little nozzles I like those now a big part what makes an SS and SS is the motor jag has two supercharged 5-liter v8 s this is the hotter of the two this guy puts out 510 horsepower 461 foot-pounds of torque that gets this 4,300 pound car up to 60 in 4.7 seconds they claim I don't doubt it mileage is is you know it's the mpg you're ok with when you can afford a car like this 15:21 that means like 16 average real world here's another stat you should know about the world's chunky Ascar key you see this thing I've got big hands that's a big damn car key and the weight I actually put it on a scale it's over 4 ounces this whole apparatus that's a quarter of a pound why Sir William Lyons always described Jaguars being possessed of space pace and grace aside from that back row of seats which is the space farm great pace and great grace this is one of the cars that hits it just right in my estimation of having a sporty capable driving posture with an absolutely luxurious ride no one else can get it quite like this not even the Audi 80 which comes the closest the s8 this car is the perfect blend of capable and comfortable that's hard to do but of course $410,000 it shouldn't be too hard to do the power comes on like scalding hot oil there's an ample home for this car although this 6-speed automatic and the way to the power tips in can get you into some glitchy situations now hit the dynamic drive mode button down here and move that all turns red up there the whole shift profile gets different and that's the sweet spot it's funny it's a lot of stagecraft I think well when you put this thing in dynamic mode you end up getting a inch back by the seat belt it sucks you up this is much to say you better hang on for your life okay a 2011 XJ Supersport basis at 110 grand at 3,000 more for a long wheelbase l and if you ever plan to give me a ride you better the only others CNET style option to consider on this loaded model is the rear seat entertainment rig for $2,200 but since it'll be obsolete technology before your first oil change just go with a couple iPads