Gadgetory

we've seen Jaguar pretty much reinvent itself over about the last half decade going from a failing old luxury brand to one of the heavy hitters in the luxury automotive space the XJ is still big old luxury though in this 2014 xjl is even bigger an even more old luxury but maybe that's okay let's hop behind the wheel and check the tech now as I said the XJ is a big old car it's the largest vehicle that Jaguar makes right now and the X JLS even larger all that's going to really be happening right here in the mid section where you get about 4.9 more inches of wheelbase even though it's a really big car it's also a really big good-looking car does have a very athletic muscular look to it and I especially like the way that the roofline run pretty much all the way back to the end of the trunk it's a gorgeous piece of machinery in the kind of car that people are going to stop you and compliment you on on the other hand nobody is going to compliment your audi now here in the cabin there's nothing that we haven't already seen in another Jaguar or even in another XJ that we reviewed there are really nice materials all over hold dashboards gonna be covered in leather there's also some nice chrome trim that's good most times a day every now and then the sun'll bounced off of that right up into your ID give you a little bit of glare while you're driving but also we've got some nice wood trim around the dashboard but every now and then some little bit of cost-cutting cheapness peeks through for example these paddle shifters that you'll use to manually select gears on your 8-speed automatic transmission they shouldn't be made out of cheap hollow plastic that kind of gives you this weird fisher-price e solo cup sound in a car that cost about a hundred thousand dollars as equipped these should be metal in a fifty-thousand-dollar infinity they would be made out of metal now here in the center of the dashboard we've got Jaguars touchscreen infotainment system again this is nothing new we've seen this in previous Jaguar models and it's starting to show its age but its ageing pretty well I think we've got our three major sections in the audio video section we've got our audio sources we've got our various digital sources including ipod USB connectivity we've got bluetooth audio streaming and then of course the DVD and CD changer getting back to the home screen we've got the nav patient system which is really crisp it's got really nice looking maps that render quickly and are easy to read there are a couple of little nitpicky things about the system that i don't really like for starters the voice command system takes entirely too long in putting a simple address can sometimes take up to like two to five minutes getting back to the main screen again the last thing we've got is our phone connectivity and here you're just going to basically have hands-free calling with contacts thinking voice command now here in front of the driver we've got our fully digital instrument cluster and it kind of manifest itself as three virtual gauges if you're in manual mode you'll see the gears over here if you're in dynamic mode the background of the gauges will turn a writ to let you know that you're driving with a little bit more zest you've also got the ability to pop into a menu here and make certain changes to the vehicle and display settings for the digital instrument cluster but a lot of automakers are starting to do digital instrument clusters and they do them in a way that I think is better to hop in this very expensive Jaguar and just see basically digital chrome next to real chrome it just looks kind of bad now the reason the xjl is about seven thousand dollars more expensive than the XJ happens right here it is about 4.9 inches of extra legroom is going to make the back seat a very comfortable place to be now this example is also equipped with a lot of extra features that are going to make this seat possibly the best seat in the house we've got these ten point nine inch dual monitors in the back of the feats that are going to give us access to a lot of infotainment features with this little remote right here for starters you can view how far away we are from our current destination we can adjust the audio source and change our different source right here now underneath me we've also got adjustable seat that's also an option now these two back seats are about as adjustable as the ones you'll find on the front row if not a little bit more we've got the ability to kind of tilt the backrest forward and back we've got a recline function that lets me kind of get really comfortable and then if I need a little bit more legroom I can even take control of the front seat and push that thing forward from right here in the back seat both backseat passengers also have fold-out little tables right here that you can use for placing a laptop or eating your lunch and then we've also got our own right here on the back row in the engine bay we've got Jaguars three liter supercharged v6 now this engine is good for 340 horsepower 332 pound-feet of torque it's a pretty powerful engine but this is a big heavy vehicle so it's not exactly overwhelming it's simply whelming in this incarnation we're looking at 16 miles per gallon in the city about 24 on the highway and 19 combined this is the thriftier of the two configurations you can get this vehicle in now our example also features Jaguars all-wheel drive system that's going to give it a little bit more stability in the corners and on slippery surfaces and in between the engine and that all-wheel drive system is an 8-speed automatic transmission and as automatic transmissions go that's a very good one this one has a sport program and paddle shifters all right Audi driver but it mean to insult your cars but don't worry you can still feel a little bit superior knowing that your outing is a much more technologically advanced vehicle than this XJ could ever really hope to be this isn't the best performing most high-tech vehicle that you're going to find in this price range the performance from the 3-liter v6 is good but as i said earlier not exactly overwhelming a lot of the good in this powertrain comes from that 8-speed automatic transmission which upshifts ridiculously quick the longer wheelbase in all-wheel drive system means this is a very planted large sedan it's very difficult to get this thing out of sorts around the corner but the trade-off there is that you do trade a little bit of the dynamism this isn't a dancer you're not going to want to take this thing to the track even though there is a dynamic mode on the powertrain now our 2014 jaguar xjl remember that's the big one is that a portfolio trim level here that's going to come pretty close to fully loaded at eighty four thousand seven hundred dollars but that doesn't mean that we don't have a bunch of options on here between the rear seats in the rear seat entertainment the upgrades to the technology and whatnot we've got an S tested price of 10 15 45 now that's a lot of money if it worth this much money well that's up to what you're looking for it's not the most high-tech or best performing car in its class but it's one of the few that does old luxury right you