Cars.com's Kelsey Mays takes a look at the 2009 Jaguar XF. It competes with the Cadillac STS and Audi A6.
Transcript
(upbeat rock music) Hi, I'm Kelsey maze for cars.com and we're at road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin with the 2009 Jaguar XF. And the XF is a mid luxury sedan. So it competes with cars like the BMW five series and the Mercedes E-Class.
Jaguar's proposition to all those buyers is that the XF starts for under $50,000 and comes with a standard V8. Now, the coop-like styling realized quite a bit of room inside. The trunk actually has more than 18 cubic feet of total volume. That's really near the top of this segment. There's also a split folding rear seat, and that's a really uncommon feature in this class. Most competitors have a fixed rear seat with a small pasture of the center for skis, rather long items. Again, another surprise is actually how much room there is in the back seat. The ceiling kind of comes up over my head, so I've got plenty of headroom and decent leg room. Jaguars thrown a few surprising little things in here, the lights overhead, and the glove compartment actually operate with the push of your hand instead of actually pushing a button. Jaguar calls, that system Jaguar Sense, which isn't to be confused with Jaguar sensibility, which is an Emma Thompson movie about cats. (cat growling) A couple of cool things happen when you start the car. First of all, this knob sort of rises out of the center. Don't mistake that for an I drive like controller, that BMW has, it's actually the gear selector for the car. Also the AC vents come out. When you turn on the car, they kind of open up like so, another kind of cool thing that'll impress your passengers. A couple of likes and dislikes about the interior. Dashboard quality is very good. There's sort of leather wrappings along the upper sections. They've got individual stitched portions here. Very nice. The buttons in the center have this sort of 50s diner look. I think it's pretty elegant. A couple of things I don't like, the turn signals still are a little bit rubbery, like in a few other Jags. The navigation system is easy to look at, but it takes forever for these menus to come back and forth. And some of them have things you definitely need quickly, like heated and cooled seats. Last but not least, sun visors, in a $50,000 car should probably extend to cover the entire window cars. Half this price have that feature. Now the regular V8 that this car has has 300 horsepower. There's also a supercharged engine with 420 horsepower. We've driven both. The regular one should work fine for most drivers. It doesn't have as much pickup right off the line as say a BMW five 50 or a Mercedes E five 50, but it's got plenty of character and good torque across the power band. The supercharged engine is a really quick car. Jaguar says it's quicker from zero to 60 than the Mercedes and BMW say their respective cars are. Jaguar might call that Jaguar fast. And Jaguar needs the X factor to return to profit. The car goes on sale this March and our first impressions are good so far. Still with high gas prices, consumers might be willing to give up a little bit of the performance for the higher mileage that a V6 engine might offer. <v Announcer>For additional information on this car or any other go to cars.com and our blog kicking tires.
