Jaguar XF Saloon 2.0d (180bhp) R-Sport 4d Auto Owner Review

I have owned this vehicle for 2 years now and travelled some 40k in it, and to be honest I am still finding I hate driving this car. The car has its good points, and there are quite a few but there are significant issues with the vehicle that make it almost dangerous to drive and intensely frustrating on the road. To summarise the good points, the car is very comfortable, the boot is huge and there is so much space inside. The drivers seat is very easy to adjust to a sensible and relaxing position and the chassis is a dream. I don't think I have ever had a car of this size handle so well, it is sure footed and the feedback you get in the drivers seat is excellent, it really feels a lot smaller and more nimble than you would think. We then come to the areas for improvement - first and by far the worst thing about the car is the autobox, I had the same gearbox in my previous BMW and I have yet to understand how Jaguar could get the software for the box so badly wrong. It works worse than some of the older traditional gearboxes that I have had, holds gears then changes up randomly, appears to slip the clutch at random occasions and does not appear to think about where the TPS might be at the time of change. The gearbox has a huge amount of lag, so much so getting out at roundabouts can become somewhat interesting/dangerous, you press the gas pedal and a lot of the time all you get is revs and no go, is bizarre. It really feels like they ran out of budget and found a suitable 5 year old to program the box ready for the road and then overlaid the same software whether the vehicle be petrol or diesel. This is not where the other IT issues end, the in touch control system is awful, the radio stays on faintly in the background, just loud enough to be annoying. the only way to stop this is turn the car off and then on again and not put the radio on. The phone connectivity is hit and miss, contacts seem to come and go within the system and if you are truly lucky the contact names appear to switch between pone numbers so it is Russian roulette as to who is calling you unless you can see your phone screen. My other bug bear is the constant system crashes resulting in losing all 'special' driving and suspension modes being available, which only seems to be resolved after turning the car on and off again. It really does feel as though I have bought a wonderful car body with a windows 95 pc embedded within. In summary the car could be great, if only Jaguar took the IT side of a vehicle more seriously. I love to drive cars and to do that I need a gearbox that doesn't have a mind of its own and all of the driver assistance aids to works seamlessly, in this car this is not what happens.