So here we are, car number four, which actually should have been car number three, the March car, no wait, the April car!!
A 2004 Jaguar X-type estate with a 2.0litre Diesel engine, and just 182,236 miles on its odometer!
Now then,
depending upon which country you live in you're probably thinking that's
a nice Jaguar if you're English and know how to pronounce it correctly,
or if you happen to be from Americaland you probably think its a nice
Jagwaaaaah!! Failing that, like me and the majority of people influenced by Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear crew, it's a
nice Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag! But however you pronounce it, if you've been reading my blog of babble for very long you probably
know that I actually bought this car early on in February as I had planned a trip to
Germany in it, and I wanted something big enough to carry three
adults, two children, all our luggage, and possibly tow a car
transporter trailer home.
I decided in my wisdom or otherwise that the
way forward was to buy a Jaguar X-type estate. Now, as I understood
it, if you travel across Europe in your car you're supposed to carry
amoungst other things all your documents for the car you're driving, and your driving
license, insurance, and V5c etc. This is why I bought it very early on
in February so that the DVLA had time to get the documents for the Jaguar
back to me in time for my trip. Anyway the DVLA advise it can take up to
six weeks for the documents to arrive and even after this time, they never arrived. I foolishly
phoned the DVLA to see what the hold up was instead of just crossing my
fingers and going for it, and they informed me that the previous owner
had not yet sent them the documents informing them of a change of
owner. I then got into a rather heated debate with a young man with a
bit of a Hitler complex, who eventually won the debate by telling me
that I couldn't take the Jaguar out of the country without the documents
as it could be a stolen car that I was trying to take out of the
country to sell. He then informed me that he had alerted the ports of my
Jaguars number plate, and that if I did try to take it out of the
country it would get siezed at the ports with everything in it until
they could find out who actually owned it!! What a laugh eh? Anyway, I
guess the little Hitler won that round then! So with just two days to go
before I was planning to make the trip to Germany I hastily bought the
Omega, crossed my fingers, and went to Germany the whole time hoping
that the Polizei wouldn't stop us and want to see all my documents!
As you know, the trip went well in the Omega.. Sort of!
Incidentally, the documents for the Jaguar arrived while we were away in
Germany, and they say that I am the second owner, and that I bought the
car in April 2012 something a bit iffy there me thinks, so I phoned the
DVLA again, and they tell me that there are a couple of outstanding
speeding fines on it, and that if I can prove when I bought it and from
who I should send this evidence to them and then I would get new
documents with the correct information, and I won't then be liable for
the fines.
So much for innocent until proven guilty! Anyway, first impressions. Well, I'm a bit disappointed if I'm honest. I've
never been a Jaguar man really, I never liked the E-type, I never liked
the XJS (although I look at them both nowadays and think that actually, I
do quite like them!) I do however like the XK8 and on more than one
occasion I have nearly bought one. I also quite like the looks of the
X-type, especailly the estate, and as you probably already know, I do quite like the looks of the
S-type! But like I
said, I wouldn't consider myself to be a Jaguar man. However, my Dad has
always quite fancied one, but he has never owned one. My Uncle had
loads, when we were kids he always seemed to have a different XJS, or
XJ6 in his drive, I reckon he changed them when his ashtrays were full!
He always said how great they were, and often bought me toy Jags.
Infact, in his whole life as far as I can remember he only ever bought
one car that wasn't a Jaguar, and I might go into that a bit later,
possibly after I sell my X-type. So due to all the hype that my Uncle,
and to a lesser extent my Dad made about the Jaguars, even though I
wasn't a big fan, I sort of have them on a bit of a pedastool in my
mind! In Mrs Clints family there have been a few Jaguars too, the
last one being an old XJ6 which was owned by her 86 year old Nan until
she used it in a fit of road-rage to barge a taxi driver off the road
who had previously over charged her. By all accounts she T-boned his
taxi, then just kept her foot on the loud pedal until the taxi was in a
field! She's quite a fierce old biddy when she's riled!
So when I bought mine, as seems to be (almost) common practice these days it was pretty much out of go-go juice, so I will oblige you and put up the first fill up shot...
So when I bought mine, as seems to be (almost) common practice these days it was pretty much out of go-go juice, so I will oblige you and put up the first fill up shot...
The other car is my Brothers, the Chim-mobile! He gets to accompany my on many of my car
adventures! So I put a decent splash of go-go juice in, and off we went
towards home. It's a stinkin diesel, so I was expecting a decent MPG
figure, and fiddling around with the switches I managed to come across
the average MPG figure on the computery thingy, it was 23.7 MPG!! 23.7,
that's not very good is it, how hard did the woman who last owned it
drive it? She must've been like the Little Old Lady From Pasadena that
the likes of Jan & Dean, and The Beach Boys sung about in the
1960's!
So upon seeing this figure and scaring myself I decided that I
would put on my lightest footware and see what I can do to improve that
MPG figure. I have managed to improve on it quite a lot, at the moment I've driven the car just under 100 miles, and I've got the figure up to
30.1 MPG, phew, thats definately an improvement, but I'm hoping to get
it even better still! Apart from the MPG I do have a couple of other
niggles. One is the interior rear view mirror, and this is probably
specific to me, and people who are about my size. For me, it's just in
the damn way all the time. I reckon Jaguar could've mounted it another
three or maybe even four inches higher on the windscreen and it would've
been fine. The other thing about it I don't like is that I find the
seats are a bit small for my lardy arse, and therefore not very comfy, plus I think the ride is a bit harsh.
Infact I did have a compareable car on my fleet with a
similar ride, it was this one...
Not good, a ten year old Jaguar should in my opinion have a better ride
than a thirty odd year old lowered Talbot! So what esle can I say about the
Jag? Well, it cost me £1800.13 has a little bit of service history and
is MOTd for about another nine months or so. It runs nice, it drives ok, and I guess that it is ok really.
Ofcourse since having it I am getting all my friends telling me that
it's mostly made from cast offs from the Ford Mundano parts bin, and I
think that nowhere is that more evident than the key you use to start
it. Having said that, whats wrong with that? Many, many cars share parts
with other cars, from an economical stand point why spend money, time,
and effort developing something thats already been developed and is
already in use somewhere else in the parent companys line up of cars? But I
have wondered if this is why it just doesn't feel very special? Is it
because its an old Mundano in a pretty party dress? I don't think it is, I mean the Capri was just an old Cortina in a pretty dress, and the
Mustang was just an old Falcon in a pretty party dress, and both the
Capri, and Mustang are regarded as quite special, so why doesn't this
X-type feel special? I dunno, I wonder if, due to the way my Dad, and
Uncle felt towards Jags, perhaps they've just been bigged up in my mind,
and this is a case of you shouldn't meet your heroes. But, I feel that
maybe, and probably more likely the problem is that the hastily added Omega before it, I really liked that, and now it's gone, and I'm driving the Jag, which I'm
sure is a perfectly good car by the way, I wonder whether the Jag through no
fault of it's own just can't compete (probably because of my rose tinted
glasses) with how I felt about the Omega? The Jag is perhaps the
re-bound car in the same way that sometimes you have a girlfriend who
you love very much, and then you break up with her, and you find someone
else who is lovely, and you want to love her but you just don't, and
you never feel the way about the re-bound girl as you did for the girl
you loved before her. Hmm, let's hope not, the last re-bound girlfriend I
had nearly murdered me, so lets just hope that my re-bound car doesn't try
the same thing!
Still, however I feel about it right now I'm going to stick it out for a
month, and hopefully it's grow on my and I'll start to enjoy it the
more I drive it, but only time will tell.
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