Gadgetory

the letter R it's how Jaguar spells the letter M or AMG after a five-year hiatus their flagship is back in our trim let's drive this 2014 XJR and check the tech now spotting the new XJR is not too difficult look for the more aggressive face you've also got a bunch of arrow effect stuff around the seal you wouldn't find elsewhere quad exhaust tips in the back and vents here on top of the hood that are yep they're functional these guys come in two lengths also standard wheelbase or long wheelbase the latter adds four point nine inches all devoted to back seat legroom let's get inside now inside an XJ are you've got these sort of sport buckets I don't care for them in this two-tone baseball mitt finish but there's no accounting for taste instrument panel on this car is all video has been since this model debuted in this generation but it's looking a little agent notice that it does what's called skeuomorphic representation of dials in other words it pretends to be 3d dials there's even this kind of a chrome effect at the top I there's some light coming down there that's looking really old-school just look at IO f7 Apple got rid of that exact same look not trying to pretend to be physical objects with video this should go the same route now the center stack is cleaner it's squared off it's got nice large zones and it's touchscreen Jaguar does not have a central controller the way other cars do your home menu here lays things out nicely with audio video navigation phone the big three that's where things start to break up though the response is a little laggy on it not terrible I think they've improved it but here it starts to show it's rather poor interface design for example you've got am/fm separate from satellite radio well those are all radio and then you've got something called my music or sometimes it's called source well radio and satellite radio resources why aren't they in a central menu with these as well why do I have to hop around so many buckets and then there's my video isn't that a source well turns out it's just DVD so why is there a separate deal for that versus sticking it under DVD it's also dated in terms of how you do voice command for an address navigation go to address navigation please say the city name San Francisco please say just second Street multiple addresses were canceled so it's the old-school bucket process where you got to enter each module at once too much distraction too much time for me and there's no connected search no Google or any other kind of look up on the internet to find addresses or destinations via fuzzy logic similarly as you noticed in those sources there are no media apps supported here no Facebook or Twitter though I can certainly live without those in my car and I also want to see a revision of the climate control system as you go and turn the temperature knobs here it takes too long for them to bring up the video display to show your temperature ditto for the seat heaters you got to hit a button to get a menu to hit a button to turn on the C heater which for some reason defaults to three bars then you got to minus it out down to one that's insanely busy now as you can imagine a car that doesn't do media apps or live search or things like that also does not have a lot of automated drive controls there's adaptive cruise available and we have passive blind spot warning lights in our mirrors and that's it there is no active blind spot tech active Lane drift tech or collision mitigating braking technology that will stop you before you run into something which a lot of the competitors have now upfront the engines a big part of what makes an XJ are NX jr. five liter supercharged v8 goes out to a one choice only 8-speed automatic and then rear-wheel drive they don't do all-wheel drive on these XJ ARS keeping in the sporty character now the numbers 550 horsepower 502 foot-pounds of torque on a car that weighs about 4,200 pounds relatively felt given its size because it's aluminum structured and that's gonna get you serious four point four seconds while delivering MPG that is not bad you've got 15 23 18 average let's go for a ride okay when you get in the XJ all right push the start button the drive controller rises to meet your hand why that's part of the little tech filigree on this vehicle that they seem to love drop it and drive you've also got sport mode which is self-explanatory and you've also got this dynamic mode here under the checkerboard button which really loosens things up so you can get in more trouble I'm also going to defeat this eco button over here that's the auto start/stop technology and Jaguar like every other luxury car maker has yet to figure out a way to make auto start-stop feel luxury now what you first notice in this car is not that it has so much power but the power is so available I love that it's so rare to find a car with big power but a light touch love these supercharged jag v8 rear wheel drive as I mentioned earlier so you can kind of break the rear end out a little bit I've got the track control off of course that makes it a little easier steering is a little the light side and maybe doesn't have quite as much feedback as a lot of purists would like but I think in a Jaguar it is an appropriate calibration measure this guy is different than an M car at AMG or an Audi S car is the blend of a luxurious ride quality with a massive power curve you don't feel like you're riding in something hard and Teutonic ever even in the full go mode that I'm dialed into right now again kicking the rear end out just a little bit this is either an English gentleman's hot rod for an English gentleman's hot rod you know the difference now next TR of course is a rather rarefied model so it doesn't come cheap 116 is based on this guy AD 3000 for long wheelbase which I would do the handling is still really good and the back seat legroom is a must in a car like this then there's 1700 bucks for the illumination package it puts these blue rings around the air vents and names on the sills and trunk I'd skip that all day long 2300 though for adaptive cruise control probably a good buy you're in for a little over one hundred and twenty one this car is not as sharp on the track as a BMW nor is it is refined technology as a BMW or an Audi or even mercedes these days but it has a nice blend of really serious Road ability and a unique Jaguar luxury Plus you just don't see them that often