ANDREA IN ARCADIA

Jaguar Revamp. Quintessentially British Made.

Gone are the days when Jaguars were only driven by rich men over the age of 50.
They have got some serious sex appeal, and I’d happily drive one as a daily car. Especially if that means I get to talk cars with car admirers I meet out and about. Certainly seeing Jaguar in the James Bond movies sparked my interest into the brand. I remember thinking, wait is that a Jaguar?! Oh my, THAT IS A JAGUAR!
Even sitting in one, I feel exactly the same. Definitely one of the nicest cars I’ve been able to review.
After driving the XE R-Sport 20t, things that come to mind are:
Sporty, Design & Comfort.

DESIGN & CUSTOMISATION
When it comes to my tech, I love being able to customise it. Whether it’s a computer, a phone or even a car. I want to make it my own, get the things I need. I mean, why should anyone pay for something if they aren’t going to use it and don’t need it?
Given this is a review car, it was already given to me with it’s customisations. The options that were included in the XE included Powered Boot Lid, Perforated Taurus Leather Sport Seats, Lane Keep Assist w/ Driver Condition Monitor, Navigation & Meridian Digital Sound System (825W) and more (see here for specs).
This car is not limited to customisations. Things you could customise include: the seats, leather, tech (heck yeah) and a bunch of other options.

(If you get a chance, I’d recommend playing around with ‘Build my XE‘, it’s super in detail and it’s always fun to dream a little.)

As far as Sports Models are concerned, you also have a few options with that, including the 25t. But if you’re looking for a good middle ground, the 20t is quite delightful. Of course, it all comes down to your driving style and personal taste.

COMFORT
Where do I even begin? Well for starters my posture sucks. And so this means I tend to not sit-up in chairs properly. With the Jaguar the seats are fully customisable, including the lumbar.
Nothing like ultra comfort while you’re zipping around the roads of the Mornington Peninsula. Plus, as a serial roadtrip lover, I will often drive hours upon hours, so comfort is extremely important to me!
The panoramic sunroof also offers another way to feel the wind through your hair, which on a beautiful day is one of the best feelings in the world.

SPORT
Now this has got to be my favourite part. I love, love, love driving and the sports mode definitely makes it more exciting!
There are a number of ways to get the feeling of ‘sporty’ out of this car.
For example, the car is sporty in styling (inside and out), as well as engine, suspension and general drive. It has the capacity to go 0-100km/hr in 7.7 seconds.
Driving in Sport is consuming for fuel, but of course, you don’t need sports mode on all the time. It’s perfect for drives on winding roads, and when you need a bit of acceleration.
Really, Sports Mode is best used when you’re going to be changing gears up and down.
Paddle-shift plays into this very well. I used to own a manual car, so I am familiar with gear shifts, but you really don’t need to be when driving this!
Each time you need to change gears, the Instrumental Panel in front of you will alert you to change up or down and you just hit the paddle. It’s almost like an exhilarating computer game.
I’ve spoken to other owners of the XE R-Sport, and most will tell you their favourite part of the car is sports mode with paddle shift.
For example, an owner mentioned he always has a lot of fun driving it on the winding roads of Norfolk.
For me, that’s a bit out of my reach, but I think the key thing here is, people that own this car love it and enjoy it. And I can definitely see why.

HOLD UP, what about the TECH?

Well, I thought you’d never ask. The tech in this car I really enjoyed. Mainly due to how simple and easy it is to understand. You’ll also find if you’ve driven a Jag/LR before
they are fairly similar so learning is easy.
For me, I had no experience, but picked it up easy. Either way, it isn’t something to worry about.
This car did have a few options which helped boost the tech.
For me, I particularly enjoy the instrument panel, projection and centre console screen. But let’s be honest here, this car is absolutely JAM packed, so I’m going to struggle to cover all the details off in one article.

So see below for some of my favourites!

SAFETY
You can’t talk tech without safety. One of the brilliant things about technology is it’s there to help improve your life, make it easier, more comfortable and certainly make it safer as well.
A lot of people are cautious when it comes to technology, and I can understand why, if you don’t understand sometimes things can be scary. But I can assure you there’s nothing to be worried about.

The thing I liked about the tech the most, is that it has a bunch of warnings built in to make sure you are abiding by the law, and it has precautionary measures in place in case someone does something silly like, abruptly merge in front of you.
Since it’s the holiday season, AKA silly season, I got to “test” out the safety mechanisms of the car, of no choice of my own. I am extremely cautious driver, so thankfully nothing happened and I was always on the ball.
For example, if a car is stopped in front of you the car will alert “Forward Alert” in the Instrumental Panel and will slow you down if you haven’t already begun to slow down.
I did find sometimes the car was a bit touchy, for example, a car sped through an intersection while I was traveling towards it and the Jaguar prematurely began to slow.
Once you understand why the car is doing it and what triggers it, you feel a bit more comfortable. At first, I didn’t really understand what was going on, but surely enough it happened a few more times.
In any case, I’m a firm believer of leaving plenty (and I mean PLENTY) of distance between you and the car in front. I don’t see the point in rushing and I’d rather ‘arrive safe than sorry’.
That being said, the safety can be triggered in a number of ways so that’s just something to be aware of.
I found the voice activation to be a bit jittery, but that’s because I tried to free-ball it instead of reading through the set commands. Knowing the set commands helps, and you can get the car to show you this (for future reference).

CRUISE CONTROL 
Adaptive-Cruise control is great, and I utilized this a fair bit on my longer drives. What’s cool to note is this model also brought you to a stop at lights, and you can restart cruise by tapping the accelerator when you’re ready to recommence. Additionally as you can control the distance between yourself and the car in front, it will maintain this as well, so you don’t have to worry about your car rapidly reaching sped and potentially rear-ending the car in front. This shouldn’t happen, because you will always have distance control pre-set and the collision
safety sensors will slow you to ensure this as well.
In past I have used this in other vehicles I’ve reviewed, and as I stated before, I prefer to sit 2 cars of space. Any more than that, and cars will continually overtake you, which in turn will push you further back and slow you down.
I did find that the pre-set space limiter was far more generous in this car than others, but I certainly don’t think this is a bad thing either. Safety is always the most important thing to me.

HEAD UP DISPLAY
Head-up display, took a bit to get used to. I automatically would look at the standard equipment for the speed first…this is probably more a trust thing more than anything. (I’ve never used one before so I was slightly skeptical). Once I got used to it, it was all I looked at. Which meant my concentration was solely on the road. You could also adjust it’s position on your screen
and clarity. For me it was fine but I guess if you’re a tall person you may need to adjust it to see it better. (Don’t fret about it though, as I said, it’s adjustable!)

What I thought was super cool about the head-up display is it also showed things like navigation (what way you need to turn and where) and also your cruise-control settings. But I have to say the nav was my favourite!

SEAT WARMERS/COOLERS
This XE had seat-warmers, unfortunately given it’s the middle of the Australian Summer, this wasn’t something I needed or wanted to test (I didn’t really feel like getting into a raging sweat),but from the owners I have spoken to, they love seat-warmers. Helps make the drive more comfortable and you can customize it so it’s not too warm. That being said, if your heart desires, you can get seat coolers as an option. This car didn’t have it, but after I dropped off the XE, I also had a preview of the Land Rover Discovery…it was a 38 degree day and I tell you,seat coolers are a god send, especially if you have leather seats. (My 5 minute preview was heavenly, before I had to get back out into the raging heat…*sigh*)

ECO MODE
Don’t get me wrong this car is certainly sporty, but it doesn’t have to be all the time. Eco Mode is actually so much fun because you can check your driving history and it rates you on performance. Again, it’s a fun competition you have with yourself to make you a better and more eco-driver.

Switching on Eco-Mode is easy, all you have to do is press a button. But even without it on, you can still check your driving performance in the menu options.

See below for my performance…not too bad. The best score I got was 99% and the worst score I got was 57%… Turns out that when driving up extremely steep slopes, with winding tracks, the car is maximizing it’s output…I mean I always knew that, but it was interesting to physically see the stats. I didn’t get a photo of it, but my average speed was 37km/hr and  I was driving up a Mountain, so that definitely makes sense as far as Eco is concerned.

With any tech, I always suggest sitting down and spending a day with a car, that way you’ll get the most out of your standards/options and be able to use your car to the best of it’s abilities. This is especially true around its safety & comfort options.

EVERYDAY LIFE WITH THE XE
No review is complete without testing the car to its limits…of my lifestyle. So this of course included some roadtrips, some shopping trips, some cruising trips.
Basically I had and made any excuse to take this car out when I got the chance.

Roadtrip- Jaguar convoy style!

SEX-APPEAL & A CONVERSATION STARTER
Being a person in her 20s, I definitely had a lot of people look at me quite confused at traffic lights, and I think this probably was one of many reasons conversation was sparked.
(By that I mean I personally haven’t seen anyone under 30 drive this car on the streets…yet.)
Although I don’t mind being asked questions- I have always loved cars, and always jump at the chance to talk about it.
Plus it gave me good insight into why people are interested in this car outside of, “It’s a Jaguar” and the prestige around its name.

I also would find a lot of people giving the car a cheeky once over, and I certainly couldn’t blame them.
For example, when I was in Portsea, as I was walking back to the car- I saw a lovely couple having a look at the car and checking out the interior. I didn’t want to disturb them so I left them for a bit.
Then my inner stress-head was thinking, “Oh dear, what if they ‘doored’ the car and they are just inspecting the damage”.
But that wasn’t the case, they were just admiring the car and as I approached, the lady commented, “Wow, your car is beautiful.” To which I responded, “I wish it was my car, I’m just reviewing it.” Then everyone laughed, but inside I was thinking “No but seriously, I wish it was….*awkward silence*”

Another time, I was washing the car and giving it a vacuum at a petrol station. (I’m a neat freak when it comes to cars, so this was very regular for me).
Before I returned the car to Jaguar, I gave a car a final clean, and as I was doing this a young fellow yelled out to me “Nice car dude!” and another fellow came up to the car to check out the front and back, and as he was leaving mentioned, “hella sexy car you’ve got there”. (He was not wrong.)
No matter what, you’ll always catch people giving the car a look. Which, was a nice feeling for me. As a car appreciator, I’m usually the person on the other-side yelling out “Nice car dude”.
So, it was very nice to be on the receiving end. (Which proved to be quite regular!)

PRACTICALITY
The car is super spacious at the front, so I was well and truly comfortable behind the wheel. My photographer however is quite tall and he struggled in the back, therefore preferring the front.
NB: This is to be expected in a sporty coupe, if you have tall friends. Luckily for me, most of my friends & family aren’t giants so this doesn’t seem to be too much of an issue, and I generally don’t have passengers in my cars anyway.

Additionally the boot space is more than ample! As far as space went, I was very happy with the XE and couldn’t fault it. It’s just what I expected it to be, but also had plenty of storage pockets in the interior as well.

OVERALL thoughts?
(I honestly could keep talking about this car, what I’ve wrote only really scratches the surface of this cars capabilities.)
The XE R-Sport is a great saloon and middle ranged sports car, perfect for any man or woman looking for something a little bit more powerful while still offering superior comfort and styling. Starting from just over AU$60,000 the possibilities with Jaguar XE are endless. If you’re in the market for a sporty saloon,  head to your local Jaguar dealer and take one for a test drive, and you’ll see what I mean.

If you’re in Melbourne however, Mebourne City JLR (Port Melbourne) is fantastic and a car lovers dream. They basically have every JLR you could dream of, and the staff there are super knowledgeable.
Even the guy in finance was able to chat with me about cars and teach me a few things I didn’t know!

The thing I love about JLR is that people here, they really freaking love their cars and even if you don’t fully understand them, they are definitely able to explain in terms anyone can understand.

Afterall, passion is the spice of life.

#JaguarLandRoverGroup #XERSPORT #XE

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Instagram: @andreamichelleindy
Twitter: @andreainarcadia
Facebook: Andrea in Arcadia

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Source:

• Jaguar XE R-Range
• Photography by Noah Esposito & Andrea Hobbs