119th out of 121
Discussion
What's going on? According to a Which? survey, the XF came 119th out of 121 in a new car reliability survey; and the S-type came 113th. Anyone read the original report? I would like to know what the issues were. Has this happened since Tata took over -- or maybe Jags have always scored badly in such surveys and I just haven't noticed before...
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2009...
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2009...
I posted the results of the Which? survey in General Gassing a few days ago, and as a result there's quite a few links to the JD Power survey which places Jaguar as one of the most reliable cars and some fleet surveys which do exactly the opposite, so there's clearly some discrepancy here.
I'm guessing - I don't know for a fact - that the format, range and content of the surveys and the age of cars included has a big influence on the outcome. It's certainly a very different question to ask - are you pleased with your new almost Jaguar? or, how many times has your 6 year old one been back to the garage? Some surveys may well include impressions of the dealer experience and customer care too, and Jaguar have always come out well here, whilst others concentrate purely on actual facts.
If the JD Power survey focuses on newer, lower mileage cars, still under warranty and being serviced at the main dealer - which I think it does - then the outcome will be very different from asking exactly the same questions of someboby who has a 8 year old XJ with a fried gearbox or broken timing chains outside the Jaguar network who has just blown the holiday cash on getting it fixed. Peversely somthing going wrong under warranty is almost a pleasant experience - it's recovered and fixed for nothing, you get to drive a different car for a while, and there's always much grovelling and apologising going on. On the other hand exactly the same failure outside the warranty is an expensive PITA.
Every customer will have very different expectations too. I know from experience some people will just shrug their shoulders and accept a big repair bill when somthing goes wrong that shouldn't have whilst others will hit the roof and walk away from the marque for good.
One thing always highlighted in any survey you'll see is just how consistently good quite modestly priced Japanese cars are, in terms of warranty cost, reliability and customer satisfaction. Perhaps that's the standard Jaguar and all the other marques at the bottom should be be aiming for - you'd certainly hope if the Japanese can manage it for prices starting at around £10 grand that Jaguar should be able to at least match them for four or five times that amount.
I'm guessing - I don't know for a fact - that the format, range and content of the surveys and the age of cars included has a big influence on the outcome. It's certainly a very different question to ask - are you pleased with your new almost Jaguar? or, how many times has your 6 year old one been back to the garage? Some surveys may well include impressions of the dealer experience and customer care too, and Jaguar have always come out well here, whilst others concentrate purely on actual facts.
If the JD Power survey focuses on newer, lower mileage cars, still under warranty and being serviced at the main dealer - which I think it does - then the outcome will be very different from asking exactly the same questions of someboby who has a 8 year old XJ with a fried gearbox or broken timing chains outside the Jaguar network who has just blown the holiday cash on getting it fixed. Peversely somthing going wrong under warranty is almost a pleasant experience - it's recovered and fixed for nothing, you get to drive a different car for a while, and there's always much grovelling and apologising going on. On the other hand exactly the same failure outside the warranty is an expensive PITA.
Every customer will have very different expectations too. I know from experience some people will just shrug their shoulders and accept a big repair bill when somthing goes wrong that shouldn't have whilst others will hit the roof and walk away from the marque for good.
One thing always highlighted in any survey you'll see is just how consistently good quite modestly priced Japanese cars are, in terms of warranty cost, reliability and customer satisfaction. Perhaps that's the standard Jaguar and all the other marques at the bottom should be be aiming for - you'd certainly hope if the Japanese can manage it for prices starting at around £10 grand that Jaguar should be able to at least match them for four or five times that amount.
fatboy b said:
There were some silly niggly things on the initial XFsm like most new cars. They're sorted now I believe. As for the S, no idea.
I've had a few minor niggles on my XF so far. However, from other fora, you can still see the same diseasal issues with the DPF failing to regenerate and causing the engine to go into restricted performance as with the XJ and the S. Big, heavy, powerfull, complex cars will be more difficult to build then simple cheap ones, and will have more demanding customers. I always presumed that's what acounted for the odd rankings. You can compare Jaguar with Audi/BMW/Merc but not with Hyundai.
It does still mean the XF is bad though. It's fair to make a cmparison with the 'S' type and expect it to do better.
It does still mean the XF is bad though. It's fair to make a cmparison with the 'S' type and expect it to do better.
Edited by varsas on Tuesday 11th August 13:02
Edited by varsas on Wednesday 12th August 08:35
Jaguar also seems still to carry this legacy image. Ask someone in the street about what they think a modern Jaguar would be like to live with and I'm sure you'll be meet with a very outdated impression. Jaguar don't advertise very much in high circulation publications, obviously they target the niche higher earners. But anyone who hasn't visted the new Jaguar website or sat in a new XF or seen what the new XJ is like, will be quite shocked at how fresh, energetic and modern the new Jaguar is.
As for the recent reliability report by Which, take it with a pinch of salt, you have no idea what the conditions and weightings of the survey were. Jaguar sell a lot fewer cars than Honda or Vauxhall, so you would get far more responses to the surveys from these customers, than from Jaguars customer which could skew the results. Plus unless you are a Jaguar enthusiast, many of Jaguars discerning customers won't spend any of their valuabletime filling in third party surveys............unless you are of course a Jaguar customer who has had an issue and then these surveys become a magnet for negative venting, much like car forums in general tend to focus in the bad rather than the good.
As for the recent reliability report by Which, take it with a pinch of salt, you have no idea what the conditions and weightings of the survey were. Jaguar sell a lot fewer cars than Honda or Vauxhall, so you would get far more responses to the surveys from these customers, than from Jaguars customer which could skew the results. Plus unless you are a Jaguar enthusiast, many of Jaguars discerning customers won't spend any of their valuabletime filling in third party surveys............unless you are of course a Jaguar customer who has had an issue and then these surveys become a magnet for negative venting, much like car forums in general tend to focus in the bad rather than the good.
Edited by Triple7 on Tuesday 11th August 13:28
G_T said:
Does this mean that RW774 guy was right in his Jaguar bashing all along?
Like me, RW 774 appears to recognise crap quality is crap quality no matter what price is stuck on the windscreen or whatever manufacturers' badge is stuck on the boot. Somthing a mechanic is perhaps uniquely placed to do - there's no room for a big ego or defensive attitude or any form of marque loyalty or preconcieved fixed opinions like expensive equalls better in the workshop. You need to get rid of all that mental rubbish first and only then will you see the real genuine truth of what's up on the ramps or spread out in bits on the bench in front of you.I've worked on cars including dozens of Jaguars for decades and am on my third long term XJ - there's no way I'd even attempt to defend Jaguar's reliability, build or component quality to a Honda owner.
EFA - and crap spelin'
Edited by Jaguar steve on Tuesday 11th August 13:35
Triple7 said:
As for the recent reliability report by Which, take it with a pinch of salt, you have no idea what the conditions and weightings of the survey were.
I don't know about that mate.Whilst it's not a perfect survey, none are, it's more accurate than simply asking around for anecdotes and relying on what the dealers say. "Which" magazine remains well respected across industries.
We've also got the likes of Jaguar Steve, who's opinion I hold in good stead, and RW774 both of whom work with these cars, and appear to be echoing the results of this survey. RW774, despite some misinformation, also pegged this result a long time before now and was chastised for it.
At such a delicate time in Jaguars future I think there is a worry about this lack of quality and I don't think the old "they're big and powerful therefore unreliable" excuse really cuts it in today's modern car industry.
Just my 2 pence of course. (I don't curently fall into their target demographic either!)
Thanks for the comments, I have been called many things over the years and not all have escaped!. So the t
t as I have been called ,returns with his thoughts......
The motor industry as we in the trade know it........
Engineers design a product , then build in absolence to keep the dealers in work(evident just at the end of your warranty ),
Then the development centres ( Rousch for example) make engineers ideas and management dream up a figure to sell the product. Then the accountants finally cheapen it to realise that price. Then the Trade have to justify our presence on this earth to the great misrepresnted fleeced public, some years after the product was produced and the dealers have had their cut. Yet we, the trade are the most ridicled!
I take my hat off to every specialist repairer of any car, un appreciated yet always suceeding in saving the client from big bills. Working out how to rebuild sealed for life units,where to get the parts cost effectively to keep the vehicles on the road.Totally against everything the manufacturer has ever wanted!
Advice is free, consider , take or leave but why ridicule it from behind a computer ?. Me no understand......
Jaguar are no different to any other motor manufacturer,yet there is a simple solution here. Build a good reliable product to exclude the obsolence , a product which is less complex, would mean using less of the worlds resources . The product would have a greater second hand value and demand would therefore increase.
t as I have been called ,returns with his thoughts......The motor industry as we in the trade know it........
Engineers design a product , then build in absolence to keep the dealers in work(evident just at the end of your warranty ),
Then the development centres ( Rousch for example) make engineers ideas and management dream up a figure to sell the product. Then the accountants finally cheapen it to realise that price. Then the Trade have to justify our presence on this earth to the great misrepresnted fleeced public, some years after the product was produced and the dealers have had their cut. Yet we, the trade are the most ridicled!
I take my hat off to every specialist repairer of any car, un appreciated yet always suceeding in saving the client from big bills. Working out how to rebuild sealed for life units,where to get the parts cost effectively to keep the vehicles on the road.Totally against everything the manufacturer has ever wanted!
Advice is free, consider , take or leave but why ridicule it from behind a computer ?. Me no understand......
Jaguar are no different to any other motor manufacturer,yet there is a simple solution here. Build a good reliable product to exclude the obsolence , a product which is less complex, would mean using less of the worlds resources . The product would have a greater second hand value and demand would therefore increase.
Jaguar steve said:
I've worked on cars including dozens of Jaguars for decades and am on my third long term XJ - there's no way I'd even attempt to defend Jaguar's reliability, build or component quality to a Honda owner.
Me, perhaps I've been lucky with my X300, but the only car I've known that was as good as it was the Honda Accord the misses chose shortly before my X300 was built. But the Jag has out lasted it. The Honda was a company car & at the end of the lease my father asked us to buy it for him. It gave many years of happy service. I think that after the X300 cars became much more complex and therefore had a lot more things to go wrong.G_T said:
Triple7 said:
As for the recent reliability report by Which, take it with a pinch of salt, you have no idea what the conditions and weightings of the survey were.
I don't know about that mate.Whilst it's not a perfect survey, none are, it's more accurate than simply asking around for anecdotes and relying on what the dealers say. "Which" magazine remains well respected across industries.
We've also got the likes of Jaguar Steve, who's opinion I hold in good stead, and RW774 both of whom work with these cars, and appear to be echoing the results of this survey. RW774, despite some misinformation, also pegged this result a long time before now and was chastised for it.
At such a delicate time in Jaguars future I think there is a worry about this lack of quality and I don't think the old "they're big and powerful therefore unreliable" excuse really cuts it in today's modern car industry.
Just my 2 pence of course. (I don't curently fall into their target demographic either!)
).The early S type and X300 were generally very good high mileage products . I have two clients with mileages in excess of 250K on both cars.One manual S one auto XJ. Apart from the mileage wall as I call it(70k), where discs, pads, roll bar bushing and vertical links need replacing they have been very good. Build quality was excellent.In my opinion they came very close to getting it right , even if styling was not altogether to everyones taste.
Then came the facelift S, accountants decided the wiring harness needed to be manufactured in some distant part of the world because it was cheaper,fine but nobody checked the quality .The factory were faced with a massive recall of replacement engine bay harnesses where the crimps were not up to standard, causing all sorts of Alarm issues. As I am aware, the supplier of these substandard products has now vanished.
Thats` what happens when accountants step in .
An early example of this occured with the DS 420.For many years the factory had produced XK engines with a cross over hot air pipe to assist in cold starting and running(those with the AED unit S1 and 2 XJ cars needed all the help they could get). Acountants decided it was an unneccessary expense so it was dropped. In fact, the low compression DS motor had hell and all issues with poor starting, so the factory reccommended fitting of the crossover pipe to the hire trade ! I think they dropped it on the 3.4 carb XJ as well.
Annother example was the use of lightweight timing gears on the xk motor,as per the XJ/ S2 E type. A previously good product, now began to stip gears!
The most recent example is with the XF rear discs, I don`t believe the client should have to pay for new rear discs and pads after 14k?. It depends on how you drive of course, but apparently it is commom place, as with the facelift S rear brakes, they have cheapened the quality of the materials again to gain more revenue . These are consumable items therefore escape the warranty and that is just not fair on the customer.
Then came the facelift S, accountants decided the wiring harness needed to be manufactured in some distant part of the world because it was cheaper,fine but nobody checked the quality .The factory were faced with a massive recall of replacement engine bay harnesses where the crimps were not up to standard, causing all sorts of Alarm issues. As I am aware, the supplier of these substandard products has now vanished.
Thats` what happens when accountants step in .
An early example of this occured with the DS 420.For many years the factory had produced XK engines with a cross over hot air pipe to assist in cold starting and running(those with the AED unit S1 and 2 XJ cars needed all the help they could get). Acountants decided it was an unneccessary expense so it was dropped. In fact, the low compression DS motor had hell and all issues with poor starting, so the factory reccommended fitting of the crossover pipe to the hire trade ! I think they dropped it on the 3.4 carb XJ as well.
Annother example was the use of lightweight timing gears on the xk motor,as per the XJ/ S2 E type. A previously good product, now began to stip gears!
The most recent example is with the XF rear discs, I don`t believe the client should have to pay for new rear discs and pads after 14k?. It depends on how you drive of course, but apparently it is commom place, as with the facelift S rear brakes, they have cheapened the quality of the materials again to gain more revenue . These are consumable items therefore escape the warranty and that is just not fair on the customer.
Diderot said:
fatboy b said:
There were some silly niggly things on the initial XFsm like most new cars. They're sorted now I believe. As for the S, no idea.
I've had a few minor niggles on my XF so far. However, from other fora, you can still see the same diseasal issues with the DPF failing to regenerate and causing the engine to go into restricted performance as with the XJ and the S. RW774 said:
An early example of this occured with the DS 420.For many years the factory had produced XK engines with a cross over hot air pipe to assist in cold starting and running(those with the AED unit S1 and 2 XJ cars needed all the help they could get). Acountants decided it was an unneccessary expense so it was dropped. In fact, the low compression DS motor had hell and all issues with poor starting, so the factory reccommended fitting of the crossover pipe to the hire trade ! I think they dropped it on the 3.4 carb XJ as well.
Annother example was the use of lightweight timing gears on the xk motor,as per the XJ/ S2 E type. A previously good product, now began to stip gears!
An earlier example might be the Leyland accountants deciding to stop of the practice of seasoning the XK blocks. I mean why do you need to sit on 6 months inventory. Surely it's OK to take a block fresh from casting and use that, it's a damn great lump of iron, surely no harm can come to it.Annother example was the use of lightweight timing gears on the xk motor,as per the XJ/ S2 E type. A previously good product, now began to stip gears!
Agreed, the long stud was not allowed to season before being machined and the casting process was substandard compared to the old short stud motors.The theory is to allow impurities within the process to expose themselves on later inspection of a seasoned block.Bad were discarded. When this sensible approach was dropped all the castings, both sub standard and otherwise were used.
Head castings as well were very poor compared with the earlier heads. On the underside of both B and straight port heads is cast a VW mark in a hexagon. Of the several companies casting the heads these were the most pure, with the thickest walls.
The factory experimented with tolerances on the bottom end to cure this accountancy problem.
Head castings as well were very poor compared with the earlier heads. On the underside of both B and straight port heads is cast a VW mark in a hexagon. Of the several companies casting the heads these were the most pure, with the thickest walls.
The factory experimented with tolerances on the bottom end to cure this accountancy problem.
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